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UTILIZING STUDENT BLOGS TO IMPROVE

WRITING SKILL

(An Action Research at 8th Grade of SMP Negeri 1

Wonogiri in the Academic Year of 2010/2011)

THESIS

By:

NISA AULIA AZAM

K2207037

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY

SURAKARTA

2011

Generated by Foxit PDF Creator © Foxit Softwarehttp://www.foxitsoftware.com For evaluation only.


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UTILIZING STUDENT BLOGS TO IMPROVE

WRITING SKILL

(An Action Research at 8th Grade of SMP Negeri 1

Wonogiri in the Academic Year of 2010/2011)

By:

NISA AULIA AZAM

K2207037

Thesis

Submitted to Teacher Training and Education Faculty of Sebelas Maret

University as a Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for Obtaining the

Undergraduate Degree of Education in English

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY

SEBELAS MARET UNIVERSITY

SURAKARTA

2011



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Nisa A. Azam



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ABSTRACT

Nisa Aulia Azam. K2207037. UTILIZING STUDENT BLOGS TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL (AN ACTION RESEARCH AT 8th GRADE OF SMP NEGERI 1 WONOGIRI IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2010/2011), Thesis. Surakarta: Faculty of Teacher Training and Education Sebelas Maret University, April. 2011.

This research aims at investigating whether and to what extent the use of student blogs improve students' writing skill and to analyze what happens when student blog is applied.

The method used in this paper is a collaborative action research. This research has been implemented within two sequenced cycles at the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri in the first semester of the academic year 2010/2011. The research data were collected through questionnaire, observation, interview, diary, photographs and tests. In order to have a clear understanding, the data were analyzed through constant comparative method and descriptive statistic.

The results of this research showed that students’ ability in producing recount text had improved along with the changes of classroom situation which became more motivating. The improvement in students’ writing skills includes: 1) the students had fewer misspelled words in their writings; 2) the students used the words in appropriate context; 3) they produced grammatically correct sentences related to recount text; 4) the students also could write the text chronologically; and 5) they are able to develop the text into interesting one. The final result of the tests showed that their scores were improving in the mean score; from 74.45 (pre-test) to 82.18 (test in Cycle 1) and 84.50 (post-test). It was above the minimum standard of the school (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimuml/KKM), which is 78.00. Related to the improvement in the classroom situation, the research findings showed that 1) the students could work effectively to finish the task; 2) the students had greater interest on the lesson; 3) they paid full attention during the class; 4) the students could utilized their own laptop in the lesson; and 5) there was no more student who did not like to share the writing.

Considering the inspiring result of this study, it is suggested that other teachers be able to make use of this improvement in utilizing and developing other media. It is also hoped that the teachers conduct the Action Research in their classroom to solve the teaching-learning problems.

Keywords: writing, blog, student blog



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ABSTRAK

Nisa Aulia Azam. K2207037. UTILIZING STUDENT BLOGS TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL (AN ACTION RESEARCH AT 8th GRADE OF SMP NEGERI 1 WONOGIRI IN THE ACADEMIC YEAR OF 2010/2011), Skripsi. Surakarta: Fakultas Keguruan dan Ilmu Pendidikan Universitas Sebelas Maret, April. 2011.

Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menginvestigasi apakah dan sejauh mana penggunaan student blog dapat meningkatkan kemampuan menulis (writing skill) siswa serta untuk menganalisis apa yang terjadi selama student blog diterapkan.

Metode yang digunakan pada penelitian ini adalah collaborative action research. Penelitian ini telah dilaksanakan dalam 2 siklus terhadap siswa kelas delapan SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri pada semester satu, tahun pelajaran 2010/2011. Data penelitian dikumpulkan melalui kuesioner, pengamatan, wawancara, buku harian, foto, dan tes. Untuk mempeoleh pemahaman yang jelas, data tersebut dianalisis melalui constant comparative method dan descriptive statistic.

Berdasarkan hasil penelitian dapat disimpuklan bahwa kemampuan siswa dalam menulis teks recount telah meningkat seiring dengan perubahan situasi kelas yang menjadi lebih motivatif. Peningkatan kemampuan menulis siswa meliputi: 1) siswa lebih sedikit melakukan kesalahan dalam mengeja; 2) siswa menggunakan kata pada konteks yang tepat; 3) mereka menulis kalimat dengan tata bahasa yang benar sesuai dengan ketentuan teks recount; 4) siswa juga dapat menulis teks secara kronologis; dan 5) siswa dapat mengembangkan teksnya menjadi lebih menarik. Hasil akhir tes para siswa menunjukkan peningkatan pada nilai rata-rata kelas; dari 74,54 (pre-tes) menjadi 82,18 (tes pada Siklus 1) dan 84,50 (post-tes). Nilai tersebut sudah melampaui batas minimum sekolah (Kriteria Ketuntasan Minimum/KKM), yaitu 78,00. Sehubungan dengan peningkatan situasi kelas, hasil temuan penelitian menunjukkan bahwa 1) siswa dapat bekerja secara efektif untuk menyelesaikan tugasnya; 2) siswa menjadi lebih tertarik dengan pelajaran; 3) mereka memberikan perhatian penuh selama kelas berlangsung; 4) siswa dapat memanfaatkan laptop pribadi mereka selama pelajaran; dan 5) tidak ada lagi siswa yang tidak suka menunjukkan hasil pekerjaannya kepada orang lain (menjadi lebih percaya diri).

Mengingat hasil yang baik dari penelitian ini, sangat disarankan bagi guru lain supaya dapat memanfaatkan peningkatan yang telah tercatat untuk memanfaatkan serta mengembangkan media baru lainnya. Selain itu, juga diharapkan agar para guru turut menerapkan Action Research di dalam kelas mereka sebagai upaya menyelesaikan masalah-masalah yang berkenaan dengan kegiatan belajar-mengajar.

Kata kunci: writing, blog, student blog



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MOTTO

nothing you can see, you can’t do

(my beloved mother)



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DEDICATION

to my beloved parents

and

to my only best brother.



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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Alhamdulillah, thanks to Allah for having this page to give final touch on

this research. It was a great deal to have this study finished. I would like to

acknowledge my first gratitude to Dra. Dewi Rochsantiningsih, M.Ed., Ph.D., my

first consultant, for the inspirations and invaluable experiences. There are so

many things waiting to touch after meetings with her. This work is not a final

ending, but a start of new beginning.

This paper will not be able to be bounded without patience of my second

consultant, Drs. Muh. Asrori, M.Pd., for reading these pages and gave many

invaluable suggestions to make it better and worthy to read. I have learnt and got a

lot of interesting things that lead me to be more knowledgeable and confidence.

My gratitude goes to The Dean on FKIP UNS, Prof. Dr. Furqon Hidayatullah,

M.Pd., as without his approval and permission this study will never exist. My

sincere gratitudes are also extended to The Head of Language and Literary

Department, Drs. Suparno, M.Pd., and The Head of English Department, Drs.

Martono, M.A., for any debt in my study during these semesters. I also gratefully

thank to all of my lectures for all of the knowledge shared; that will always grow

bigger and long lasting.

My special gratitude is for my parents who never stop loving me with

their prayers and never give up to remind me for dinner. Abi, Ummi, this writing

makes laugh and cry completely blended.

To my brother, thank you for every movie you had copied. That was

joyful moments, chatting in front of the moving pictures and hope it will be

repeated again soon.

To my closest, every time you spent listening to me murmuring around

was enlightening. Finally, words will never enough to replace all what I have got.

April 2011



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TABLE OF CONTENT

Page

TITLE

THE APPROVAL OF THE CONSULTANTS

THE APPROVAL OF THE EXAMINERS

ABSTRACT

MOTTO

DEDICATION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENT

LIST OF TABLE

LIST OF PICTURE

LIST OF APPENDIX

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CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION 1

A. Background of the Study

B. Problem Statements

C. The Objectives of the Study

D. The Benefits of the Study

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CHAPTER II REVIEW ON RELATED LITERATURE 9

A. Writing

1. The Nature of Writing

2. Writing Skills

3. Writing in the Classroom

4. Writing Recount Text

5. Assessing Writing

B. Blog

1. What Blog is

2. Types of Blog

3. Blog in the Classroom

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a. Blog as teaching-learning media

b. Teaching writing using blog

c. Advantages and disadvantages of blog

C. Related Research

D. Student Blog in Improving Writing Skills

E. Action Hypothesis

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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 26

A. Context of the Research

1. The Setting of the Research

2. The Subject of the Research

B. The Method of the Research

1. Action Research

2. The Procedure of Action Research

C. Technique of Collecting the Data

D. Technique of Analyzing the Data

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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 34

A. Situation Prior to the Research

B. Research Implementation

1. Procedure of the Research

2. Cycle 1

a. Planning the action

b. Implementing the action

c. Observing the implementation

d. Reflecting the result of the observation

3. Cycle 2

a. Revising the plan


c. Observing the implementation


C. Findings

1. The improvement of the students’ writing skill

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2. The improvement of the classroom situation

3. The improvement of the students’ attitude

D. Discussion

1. Student blog is able to improve students’ writing skill

2. Student blog is able to improve situation in the writing class

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CHAPTER V CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTIONS 61

A. Conclusion

B. Implication

C. Suggestion

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BIBLIOGRAPHY 65



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LIST OF TABLE

Page

Table 2.1. The Scoring Rubric of ESL Composition Profile

Table 2.2. The Scoring

Table 2.3. The Use of Blog in the Classroom

Table 3.1. Schedule of the Research

Table 3.2. The Classroom procedure of the Research

Table 4.1. Situation Before the Research

Table 4.2. The Research Procedure

Table 4.3. The Improvement of the Students’ Learning and Achievement

in the End of Cycle 1

Table 4.4. The Improvement of the Students’ Learning and Achievement

in the End of Cycle 2

Table 4.5. Summary of the Research Findings

Table 4.6. The Improvement of the Students’ Achievement

Table 4.7. The Sample of Students’ Achievement

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LIST OF PICTURE

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Figure 2.1. Screenshot of a Blog Page

Figure 2.2. Screenshot of a Blog Posting Form

Figure 3.1. The Individual Aspect in Action Research

Figure 4.1. Chart of Number of Students Passing the Test

Figure 4.2. Chart of Students’ Interest on Writing

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LIST OF APPENDIX

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Research Journal

The Summary of the Research

List of Activities

Teacher Syllabus

Lesson Plans

Pre-Questionnaires

Post-Questionnaires

Students’ Worksheets A (Writing Task)

Students’ Worksheets B (Pre-Test)

Students’ Worksheets C (Post-Test 1)

Students’ Worksheets D (Post-Test 2)

Students’ Blog Posts

The Result of Pre-Questionnaire

The Result of Post-Questionnaire

The Result of Pre-Test

The Result of Post-Test 1

The Result of Post-Test 2

The Result of the Tests

Sample Students’ Achievement

Research Diaries

Interview Notes

Observation Form

Photographs

Legalizations

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CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. The Background of the Study

The recent national standard of education in Indonesia is decided on the

Government Regulation No. 19/2005. It has the purpose of ensuring the

development of education in Indonesia by stating the minimum standard for every

level of education. The content is about the standard of content, process,

graduated competence, teacher, and materials for education, cost, and evaluation.

This curriculum has a function as a basis of planning, action, and controlling the

education to reach a good quality of education.

It is stated in the curriculum that the students are supposed to master

English for communication. The purposes of English learning in Junior High

School level are 1) to develop communicative competence either written or

spoken in the functional level; 2) to raise learners’ awareness about the

importance of English in the global society; and 3) to develop students’

understanding about the relationship between language and culture. In short, the

students should master both spoken and written discourse of English in order to

communicate and to use the language actively in the social environment.

The curriculum in Indonesia is adapted from the genre-based approach.

This approach focuses on the text as the main resources in language learning. The

goal is “to enable students to develop the knowledge and skill to deal with spoken

and written texts in social contexts” (Nugroho and Hafrizon, 2009: 4). This

approach is developed based on three basic assumptions: language learning is a

social activity; learning occurs more effectively if teachers are explicit about what

is expected of students; and the process of learning language is a series of scaffold

developmental steps which address different aspects of language. The genre-based

approach relies on the principle that learning is conducted through collaboration

of the students-teacher and among students.

In line with the curriculum and genre-based approach, being able to

communicate is integrated as being able to create discourses in a certain level of



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literacy. The literacy level, in the term of Junior High School students, is the

functional level. It means that the students should be able to communicate in

spoken or written discourse to have the daily activities done, for instance reading

newspapers, manuals, or instructions. In addition, there are two skills which

naturally belong to the literacy skill; one of those is writing. It is one of the skills

to be mastered by the students in learning English other than listening, speaking,

and reading. In some schools, most of the English classes are dominated by

writing activities. Nevertheless, students rarely implement their skills in the real

life situation and cannot communicate well using their text.

Written language is not the only way of communication using a

language. To communicate, people also produce the spoken form of a language. In

comparison, writing is not merely about transcribing the spoken language into the

written form. Writing is considered as a complex skill since “people need to be

able to form letters and words, and join these together to make words, sentences,

or a series of sentences that link together to communicate a message” (Spratt,

Pulverness, and Williams, 2010: 26). Palmer in Matthews, Spratt, and Dangerfield

(1989: 71) says “ writing is a special skill that does not spring naturally from an

ability to speak a language“ since errors are commonly found in students writing

not only in English (L2), but also in their first language (L1).

The standard of curriculum is applied to every school in Indonesia,

including RSBI (Rintisan Sekolah Berbasis Internasional) which is expected to be

internationally standardized. Faridi (2009: 3) states:

Menurut buku panduan yang dikeluarkan oleh Diknas Propinsi jawa Tengah th.2007/2008, pengertian sekolah bertaraf internasional adalah suatu sekolah yang telah memenuhi Standar Nasional Pendidikan pada tiap aspeknya, meliputi: kompetensi lulusan, isi, prosess, pendidik, dan tenaga kependidikan, sarana dan prasarana, pembiayaan, pengelolaan, penilaian dan telah menyelenggarakan serta menghasilkan lulusan dengan ciri keinternasionalan.

In other words, that type of school should adapt and/or adopt an

education standard in the country or abroad which has a high quality and has been

approved internationally. SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri is one of the RSBI schools that

applies higher standard of the students, especially in English lesson. The passing



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grade for English lesson in this school is stated at 78.00. Although the students

belong to RSBI school, their writing skills aren't good enough and need to be

improved. They have a good interest in English but not in writing.

The main problem faced by the students in writing a text is the difficulty

of sharing ideas in the written form. The indicators of this problem are clearly

indicated in their works. The students rarely consult to dictionary and mostly use

their own interpretation about the spelling in writing, so that they write the words

incorrectly. They also tend to use the literal translation of word and use it

improperly within a sentence. Furthermore, the students are not aware of the use

of some grammatical aspects (tense, article, preposition, pronoun, phrasal verb,

etc.) . They frequently make mistakes in writing grammatically correct sentences.

Once they make it, some details are forgotten, for example the articles. It is also

found that the students write the sentence in wrong word order and carelessly

punctuate the text that may lead to misinterpretation. Besides, their writing texts

are sometimes incoherent. The ideas of the story are not well developed and the

use of conjunction are ambiguous in some cases.

In addition, the classroom situation shows that the students did not

directly do the task given. They keep on maintaining their activity which has no

relation with the lesson. Some of them are indicated not too interested in the

lesson. It seems that they get bored when they have to wait and see the model of

the lesson. As a consequence, they prefer having a talk with the next friends to

paying full attention to the teacher.

In SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri, the students are allowed to bring personal

laptop with them. The students who bring their own laptop will operate it during

the lesson. It may help them in learning, but it may also bring disadvantages when

uncontrolled. The students access the internet and forget about the lesson they sit

in. It distracts their focuses, hence they work slowly. Another indicator of the

problem faced by the students is that they do not have enough self-confidence in

their writing. They prefer not to show and not to share their writing to others.

The problems found are related to the material and teaching techniques,

school facilities, and the students’ attitudes during the lesson. From the material



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and the technique point of view, the current sources of material are not

communicative and it has a higher level than the students’ general ability. The

teacher does not distribute the textbook because of this reason. Furthermore, the

facilities served in the school are not used effectively. The teacher only uses the

whiteboard during the lesson instead of the LCD projector that is available in the

classroom and the students do not access the internet under any task of English

lesson.

The most causes are coming from the students themselves. They rarely

practice their writing skill to communicate broadly. It is true that the students like

to access internet which is basically a very rich resources to learn English;

however, they do not use it to practice whether they are not motivated to utilize it

or really not interested in it. Besides, most of them easily lose their focuses during

the lesson. They are still in the range of children who have short time of interest.

They could not be forced to stay in a topic for any longer than they want. Another

cause of the problem in students’ writing is the literal translation. They translate

their mother tongue in writing which may lead to misunderstanding in

communication.

It is mentioned in the syllabus that the standard competence of writing

skill for the eighth grade student is “expressing meaning in short written

functional text and essay in descriptive, recount and exposition to communicate

with the closest environment and/or in academic context to build good character”.

This standard is then broken down into two basic competences:

1. Expressing the information in short written functional text accurately,

systematically, and acceptably to communicate with the closest

environment and/or in academic context to build good character.

2. Expressing meaning in short essay in descriptive, recount and exposition

accurately, systematically, and acceptably to communicate with the closest

environment and/or in academic context to build good character.

Nevertheless, the students in SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri could not reach the

standard of competence which is drawn from the curriculum and the syllabus.

They need some improvements in their writing skills as indicated by the average



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score (74.45) that lies under the school minimum target (78.00) and the teaching-

learning process.

The situation and condition that distract the learning process in reaching

the target can be solved by optimizing the facilities in the school and the use of

internet in the classroom. Since 1990s, there is a new term TELL (Technology

Enhanced Language Learning) that focuses on the utilization of internet use and

communication technology. There are many reasons to bring internet and

technology into classroom, some of them are:

- Internet access is becoming increasingly available to learners

- Young learners are growing up with technologies, and it is a natural and

integrated part of their lives—it is a way of bringing the outside world into

the classroom.

- English as an international language, is being used in technologically

mediated context.

- Technology, especially the Internet, presents new opportunities for authentic

tasks and materials, as well as access to a wealth of ready-made ELT

materials.

- The Internet offers excellent opportunities for collaboration and

communication among learners who are geographically dispersed.

- Technology is offered with published materials such as coursebook and

resource books for teachers.

- Learners increasingly expect language schools to integrate technology into

teaching.

- Technology offers new ways for practicing language and assessing

performance.

- Technology can not only be used in the classroom, but also at home and

even public area.

- Using a range of ICT tools can give learners exposure to and practice in all

of the four main language skills – speaking, listening, writing, and reading.

(adapted from Dudeney and Hockly, 2007: 7-8)



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The internet huge range of materials and methods of communication can

allow the students to discover language for themselves in a more immediate way

than by reading a textbook. Teeler (2000: 82) states ”the internet has advantages

of providing up-to-date, authentic material in English, and opportunities for real

communication with native and non-native speakers”. In the term of writing, the

students can grab many advantages of using internet as a learning resource. One

of the activities that can help the students in improving their writing skill is

writing on blogs, since it can be done anytime and it is publicly available on the

internet. Campbell (2004) says:

Because of the relative quickness and ease of publishing this type of software affords, the number of users has grown tremendously since then, and we can now observe blogs being used for personal, educational, journalistic, and commercial purposes.

Blogs also provide a 'real-world' tool for learners with which to practice their

written English, for example when it is used as a means for contacting learners

from other parts of the world in an international exchange (Dudeney and Hockly,

2007: 90).

Blog is an online journal which is usually used to share one's thoughts,

ideas, photos, or videos. It was first sprung from the idea of compiling a list of

interesting websites on the internet in 1999. In her article, Blood (2000) shares her

note about blog as follows:

The original weblogs were link-driven sites. Each was a mixture in unique proportions of links, commentary, and personal thoughts and essays. Weblogs could only be created by people who already knew how to make a website. A weblog editor had either taught herself to code HTML for fun, or, after working all day creating commercial websites, spent several off-work hours every day surfing the web and posting to her site. These were web enthusiasts.

The later weblogs more focus on a sort of short-form journal that are usually more

about “something noticed on the way to work, notes about the weekend, a quick

reflection on some subject or another“ than about someone’s thoughts (Blood,

2000). Furthermore, the rapid development of ICT has allowed the owner of



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weblog to maintain it with a basic knowledge of HTML code. There are also

various services on web that provide free blogging.

The owners of blogs can continuously update it easily anytime they want.

They do not need any special knowledge of HTML or FTP (File Transfer

Protocol), thus “anyone who can type, copy, or paste can create and maintain a

weblog” (Campbell, 2003). For blogs are accessible and widely used nowadays,

the students may have been familiar with it, although they never have it before. In

the classroom, blog can be utilized to teach writing. Students can post their

assignments on it and write any other things they want. Moreover, the applications

on the blog allow students to customise its appearance and it will motivate them to

write on it. Campbell (2003) states:

However, with a very basic knowledge of HTML, users can extend their ability to customize the layout of their blog and even add pictures to enhance its attractiveness. Similar to an open journal, the accumulation of writings and other content creates both a record of learning and a resource for others. Furthermore, a weblog is interactive, in the sense that readers can respond to any given entry with a comment and even threaded discussions can take place depending on the software chosen.

Based on the considerations above, the title of this research is

UTILIZING STUDENT BLOGS TO IMPROVE WRITING SKILL (An

Action Research at 8th Grade of SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri in the Academic

Year of 2010/2011. This research focuses on how to implement student blogs in

teaching writing. It also involves the teaching learning processes that happen in

the classroom.

B. Problem Statement

In order to make this study more specific, the problems are stated as

follows:

1. Can and to what extent the use of student blogs improve students’ writing

skill?

2. What happens when student blog is applied to teach writing skill?



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C. The Objective of the Study

The objectives of the study are stated as follows:

1. To identify whether and to what extent the use of student blogs improve

students' writing skill.

2. To analyze what happens when student blog is applied to teach writing.

D. The Benefits of the Study

After finishing this study, it is hoped that the result can give benefits as

follows:

1. For the students: It is hoped that the result of the study can improve

students' writing skill and motivate them to write more in online

blog to build a broader community.

2. For the teacher: The teacher can improve their teaching techniques by the

elaborations of the use of student blog and the other two types.

3. For theoretical application: It is hoped that the result of the study can give

additional information of language teaching activity, especially in

teaching writing skill.



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CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

The review of related literature is aimed to provide the basic theories of

the research. There are five subheadings consisting of review on writing, review

on blog, review on related research, rationale, and hypothesis. There are two main

points of view in writing: writing as a process and a final product. It is mentioned

here the stages that are commonly done in the process of writing to produce the

writing itself. This chapter also presents the review of literature about blogs as the

main media used in this research. Blog and its features will be explained more in

the following section and continued by the review of related researches on the use

of blogs in education, especially teaching-learning English. Finally, it is closed by

the rationale and the practical hypothesis of the research.

A. Writing

1. The Nature of Writing

Literacy skills include being able to read and write different sorts of texts

for different purposes (Cameron, 2005: 124). Literacy, in the sense of social,

provides people with opportunities to share meaning across space and time, while

in the sense of cognitive, requires that specific skills and knowledge about how

the written language operates in proceeding text. Fomkin (1990: 342) states

“writing is one of the basic tools of civilization”. It was first the pictograms, then

turns into alphabet after centuries. There are three writing systems used in the

world: word writing, syllable writing, and alphabetic system. In the word writing

system, every symbol or character represents a word or morpheme (as in China);

each symbol in the syllable writing system represents a syllable (as in Japan); and

each symbol in the alphabetic writing system represents (for the most part) one

phoneme (as in English).

Supporting to Fromkin, Bram (1995: 25) states that the purpose of

writing is communication. Messages are sent through written form between the

writer and the reader. Nevertheless, a written text uses language in a most



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decontextualized form, produced in isolation from its intended audience and

without resource to share context (Arndt in Wallace, 1998: 97). It can be

concluded that in writing, someone needs some specific skills to make sure that

the other person can get the message of the written text shared.

2. Writing Skills

Writing is one of the English skills. It is usually compared with speaking,

reading, and listening. Writing is usually seen as a product, but it is actually also a

process. According to Hudelson in Richard (1995: 130), writing is “a language

process in which an individual creates meaning by using symbol to construct a

written text”. The writer’s language background, personal experience, and cultural

framework, as well as by the purpose for writing and the audience for the piece

will influence the text that individual constructs. Supporting to Richard, Harris

(1993: 10) defines writing as “a process that occurs over period of time,

particularly if we take into account the sometimes extended periods of thinking

that precede creating an initial draft”. In the beginning process of writing, initial

draft is created; it is influenced by the writer’s background knowledge and his

culture.

Seen as a process, writing is not a simple thing to do. It is done step by

step as proposed by Hedge (1998: 9) that “good writers create a text trough certain

processes which lead to successful piece of written work, these are an overall

planning, drafting, reviewing, revising, and editing”. In addition, Brown (1994:

321) states “the process approach to writing instruction is an attempt to take

advantage of the nature of the written code to give students a chance to think as

they write”. It implies that writing is not instantly produced since writers need a

couple of time to be able to produce a complete text. Drawn from the Writing

Tutorials on Microsoft© Student 2008 DVD®, the four steps of good writing are:

a. Prewriting: choosing the topic and gathering information;

b. Writing: write three parts of structure (beginning, middle, and ending);

c. Revising: checking the trait of ideas, organization, voice, word choice,

sentence fluency;



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d. Editing: checking the use of punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and

grammar (mechanics).

In other words, writing process is periods of thinking that precede

creating an initial draft due to conveying one’s meaning using symbol influenced

by one’s language background, personal experience, and cultural framework. It is

done through the process of prewriting, drafting, writing, revising, and editing.

From the point of view that writing is a product, writers should master

certain skills due to creating a good writing. Hedge (1998: 8) points out some

skills that writers need, these are: (a) getting the grammar right; (b) having a range

of vocabulary; (c) punctuating meaningfully; (d) using the conventions of layout

correctly, e.g. in letter; (e) spelling accurately; (f) using a range of sentence

structure; (g) linking ideas and information across sentences to develop the topic;

(h) developing and organizing the content clearly and convincingly.

Nunan mentions some other writing skills that it includes the control of

content, format, sentence structure, vocabulary, spelling, letter formation,

cohesiveness and coherence of paragraphs and texts (1998: 6). He states:

Writing involves mastering of the mechanics of letter formation and obeying conventions of spelling and punctuation; using grammatical system to convey one’s intended meaning; organizing content at the level of the paragraph and the complete text to reflect given/new information and topic/comment structures; polishing and revising one’s initial efforts; selecting an appropriate style for one’s audience (1998: 7).

Burns and Broman (1975: 232) note the mechanics in writing as follows:

a. capital letters (first word of a sentence, proper names, titles of books,

days of the week)

b. period (end of a declarative sentence, abbreviations)

c. question mark (end of a question sentence)

d. apostrophe (contractions)

e. exclamation point (end of an exclamatory sentence)

f. sequence of sentences

g. paragraphs



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Supporting to the previous theories, Brown (1994: 327; 2004: 220)

mentions some microskills for writing as follows:

a. Produce graphemes and orthographic patterns of English.

b. Produce writing at an efficient rate of speed to suit the purpose.

c. Produce an acceptable core of words and use appropriate word order

patterns.

d. Use acceptable grammatical systems (e.g. tense, agreement, and

pluralisation), patterns and rules.

e. Express a particular meaning in different grammatical forms.

f. Use cohesive devices in written discourse.

Based on the definitions above, it can be concluded that writing is a

process of producing a piece of written text to convey meanings. In doing so, the

writer has to master the skills of producing letters in correct spelling, having a

range of vocabulary, using correct grammatical system—including the use of a

range of sentence structure, maintaining cohesiveness and coherence of

paragraphs and text, and developing and organizing the content clearly and

convincingly.

3. Writing in the Classroom

Harris points out that writing has to be planned in order to achieve both

well sequenced ideas and selection of the words that will lead to effective

communication and the writers should “find ways of motivating themselves to

continue creating a text” (1993: 4). Writers need certain conditions that will

encourage them to produce a piece of writing. They should make such a mind map

about what they are going to write and crate an initial draft. These conditions will

be occupied when the writing activity is interesting and the product of writing

should be taken into account. Additionally, Brown (2004: 220) suggests the

following categories of classroom writing performance:

a. Imitative

Students are asked to write English letters, words, or even sentences in

order to learn the convention of the orthographic code. The primary focus is



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on the form and accuracy. Dictation is one of the activities belonging to this

stage.

b. Intensive (controlled)

The common form of controlled writing is usually related to the

grammatical aspect. Not only the grammatical correctness, but also the

appropriateness of vocabulary within a context, collocation, and idioms.

Meaning and context determine the correctness and appropriateness. The

activity that belongs to this category is guided writing.

c. Responsive

The responsive writing requires learners to perform at a limited discourse

level, connecting sentences into paragraph and creating a logically connected

sequence of two or three paragraphs. Genres of writing include brief narratives

and descriptions, short reports, lab reports, summaries, brief responses to

reading, and interpretation of charts or graphs.

d. Extensive

It can be done in the form of short writing essays, a term paper, and

research reports. This is the most complex writing performance since the

writer focuses on achieving illustrate ideas, organizing and developing ideas

logically, using details to support or illustrate ideas, and demonstrating

syntactic and lexical variety.

Along with the microskills of writing, Brown (1994: 330-332) proposes

the principles of designing writing techniques as follows:

a. Incorporate practices of "good writing"

b. Balance process and product

c. Account for cultural/ literacy backgrounds

d. Connect reading and writing

e. Provide as much authentic writing as possible

f. Frame the techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting, and revising stage

In conclusion, writing activities in the classroom should be able to

provide plenty of practices for students and able to encourage their interest and

motivation in order to achieve the communicative purpose of writing.



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4. Writing Recount Text

There are some types of text used in teaching-learning language in genre-

based approach. In brief, those are descriptive, narrative, recount, report,

procedure, discussion, analytical exposition, and hortatory exposition. Nugroho

and Hafrizon (2009: 7) mention that monologue texts introduced in secondary

junior high school are procedure text, descriptive text, report text, recount text,

and narrative text.

Taken from the syllabus for the eighth grade of Junior High School

students, two text types that should be mastered by the students in the first

semester are descriptive and recount text. It is mentioned that the students should

be able “to express meaning in short essay in descriptive, recount and exposition

accurately, systematically, and acceptably to communicate with the closest

environment and/or in academic context to build good character” (Teacher

syllabus, 2010).

The focus of this research is on teaching writing recount text. Recount

text is used to retell past events chronologically for the purpose of informing or

entertaining. Every text type has its own characteristics, including recount text.

One single text commonly consists of three main parts: beginning, middle, and

ending as Harsyaf, Nurmaini, and Izmi (2009: 13) say:

Journals, diaries, biographies, personal letter all share a familiar beginning, middle and end structure. Each of them begins with a brief introduction usually providing some background information to the writing (orientation stage). This is followed by a writing about recounting of different event, one after the other (recount stages).

This means that the generic structure of recount text consists of

orientation, sequence of events, and reorientation. In the orientation, the reader is

introduced to the setting and participants of the text. It is continued by the events

happening which are arranged chronologically or based on time order and ended

by the participant’s reflection called reorientation.

Furthermore, Isaacson (2003) in the journal issued by Pennsylvania

University (2006) mentions some critical details of personal narrative (recount)

as follows:



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a. The story tells what happened to the author.

b. It focuses on one interesting event.

c. It tells everything in the order that it happened.

d. The author uses details that help the reader “see” the action.

e. The author tells why he/she remembers it or what was learned.

Texts not only differ in its purpose and generic structure, but also the

language used. Some text types are dominated by present tense sentences and

some other are written in past tense form. Recount text is dominated by past tense

sentences to retell or inform the past events. Besides, the use of sequential

conjunction is easily indicated. It also focuses on human participant, either

individual or group, and uses a lot of action verbs. Below is an example of recount

text:

My mother got me ready for school then I had to wait for her to brush my hair and place every strand in just the perfect position. I had to show her my shoes that I had cleaned the night before and my school bag had to be neatly put on my shoulder before I could get near the door. Only after my mother was totally satisfied would I be allowed to rush out of the front door.

I would leave home at 8 am on the dot and make my way down the lane. After a walk of about 700 metres I would be able to see the tall steeple of the school.

The playground would be full in the summer and the noise would make me want to rush into the yard and get into a good game of football before the bell went.

(Adopted from http://www.icteachers.co.uk/children/sats/recounts.htm)

5. Assessing Writing

There are variety of testing writing since it has many kinds of tasks that

is engaged. Madsen (1983: 101) proposes three distinct stages of writing

instruction: pre-writing, guided writing, and free writing. Limited response is one

of techniques for evaluating pre-writing. It focuses on the vocabulary and

grammar. In further stage of instruction, guided writing having an objective to

check student ability to handle controlled or directed writing tasks. Some

activities that belongs to this level are dictation, text manipulation, and expanding

an outline of an article. Free writing enables student to develop a text from a



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certain topic. It is generally used to evaluate the effectiveness of the total

composition including sentence-level accuracy, large rhetorical matters, as well as

effectiveness in conveying ideas to the intended audience.

Madsen (1983: 119-122) and Reid (1993: 235) mention two types of

grading the score of writing test: holistic and analytic. Holistic scoring evaluates

the whole text as a unity in consideration of the reader’s impression, while

analytic scoring evaluates the various components of a piece of writing separately.

In order to have a clear grading of students’ writing skill, the rubric of scoring is

adopted from the ESL Composition Profile. The conversion of the score are listed

in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1. The Scoring Rubric of ESL Composition Profile

Score Criteria Description

Con

ten

t

30 – 27

26 – 22

21 – 17

16 – 13

Excellent to Very Good Good to Average Fair to Poor Very Poor

Knowledgeable, substantive development of thesis, relevant to assigned topic. Sure knowledge of subject, adequate range, limited development of thesis, mostly relevant to topic but lacks detail Limited knowledge of subject, little substance, inadequate development of topic Doesn’t show knowledge of subject, non-substantive, not pertinent, or not enough to evaluate

Org

an

izat

ion

20 – 18

17 – 14

13 – 10

9 – 7


Fluent expression, ideas clearly stated/supported, succinct, well-organized, logical sequencing cohesive Somewhat choppy, loosely organized but main ideas stand put, limited support, logical but incomplete sequencing Non-fluent, ideas confused or disconnected, lacks logical sequencing and development Does not communicate, no organization, or nor enough to evaluate

Voc

ab

ula

ry

20 – 18

17 – 14

13 – 10

9 – 7


Sophisticated range, effective word/idiom choice and usage, word form mastery, appropriate register, Adequate range, occasional errors of word/idiom form, choice, usage, but meaning not obscured Limited range, frequent of word/idiom form, choice, usage, meaning confused or obscured Essentially translation, little knowledge of English vocabulary, idioms, word form, or not enough to evaluate



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Lan

guag

e U

se

25 – 22

21 – 18

17 – 11

10 – 5


Effective and complex constructions, few errors of agreement, tense, number, word order/function, articles, pronouns, prepositions Effective but simple constructions, minor problems in complex constructions, several errors of agreement, tense, number, word order/function, articles, pronouns, prepositions, but meaning seldom obscured Major problems in simple/complex constructions, frequent errors of negation, agreement, tense, number, word order/function, articles, pronouns, prepositions and/or fragments, run-ons, deletions, meaning confused or obscured Virtually no mastery of sentence constructions rules, dominated by errors, doesn’t communicate, or not enough to evaluate

Mec

han

ics

5

4

3

2


Demonstrates mastery of conventions, few errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing Occasional errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, but meaning not obscured Frequent errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, poor hand writing, meaning confused or obscured No mastery of conventions, dominated by errors of spelling, punctuation, capitalization, paragraphing, hand writing illegible, or not enough to evaluate

In order to simplify the scoring for junior high school level, the

conversion of each aspects evaluated is as follows:

Table 2.2. The Scoring Rubric

Aspect Description Maximum

Score Content The relation of content and its details 30

Organisation The cohesive and logical sequencing of text 20

Vocabulary The precision of vocabulary used 20

Language use The use of appropriate tense, agreement, and word order 25

Mechanics Spelling and Punctuation 5

Total Score: 100



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B. Blog

1. What Blog is

There are some social softwares that allow people to build a community

in the internet range. Some of them are blogs, wikis, and podcasts. The basic

features that distinguish those three social softwares are: a) blog is more like a

diary, b) wiki is like a website which consists of a number of collaborative web

pages, and c) podcast is more related to the audio and/or video file broadcasted

and accessed via internet. Dudeney and Hockly (2007: 86) state “a blog, short

term of weblog, is essentially a web page with regular diary or journal entries”.

Supporting to Dudeney and Hockly, Johnson (2004) defines blogs as

“electronic journals that allow the users to keep records of their writing on a

website”. In addition, Campbell (2003) states ”an individual can continuously

update the blog with his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts through software

that enables one to easily do so”. In other words, blog is an online journal that

enables the user to write his or her own words, ideas, and thoughts trough

softwares and update it as a web page.

Blog has some features that are used to maintain it as the user want:

a. Access Control

The users of blogs can maintain a private online space for collecting and

sharing any stuff they want or a group blog with multiple authors as an

excellent communication tool for small teams, families and other groups. They

can also set the comment moderations to allow any intended readers to give

comments of the posts (blog entries).

b. Appearance

The appearance of blogs is editable using simple moderation buttons on it.

Blog templates, font colour and size, and other page elements are easy to edit

without having to learn the HTML code.

c. Supporting Features

On the writing page of blogs, it is completed with formatting toolbar and

one-click buttons for uploading or adding photos, videos, and links to the blog

post.



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Figure 2.1. Screenshot of a Blog Page

Figure 2.2. Screenshot of a Blog Posting Form



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2. Types of Blog

Blogs used in education are known as edublogs. The topics covered in

edublogs are related to education, from musings on educational policy and

developments to learner compositions (Dudeney and Hockly, 2007: 87). There are

three types of blog which are used in language teaching: tutor blog, student blog,

and class blog (Campbell, 2003; Dudeney and Hockly, 2007).

a. Tutor blog

Tutor blog is a blog set up and maintained by a teacher. Some possible

uses of tutor blog are:

1) Providing daily reading practice as the teacher posts texts in order to make

the students get familiar with English texts.

2) Providing materials that will encourage students to explore the English

websites.

3) Online verbal exchange trough commenting on posts (blog entries).

4) Giving information about the class syllabus or assignments.

5) Serving a resource of links for self-study.

b. Student blog

Student blog is set up and maintained by individual or small collaborative

group of learners. It can be used to:

1) Post students thoughts after reading class.

2) Encourage students to use search engine and net surfing in English.

3) Encourage students in writing class by its connections to internet.

4) Post journal for writing practices.

c. Class blog

Class blog is set up and maintained by an entire class as a result of

collaborative effort. Learners all post to the same blog. It can be used for:

1) Publishing bulletin board.

2) Class work, e.g. creating online resources for friends.

3) Creating a virtual space for international classroom in language exchange

4) Reading and writing classes.



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Dudeney and Hockly (2007: 90) suggest some other ways of using blogs

with learner as listed in the following table.

Table 2.3. The Use of Blog in the Classroom

Tutor blog Student blog Class blog

• Set homework. • Provide a summary of class

work. • Provide links to extra

reading/listening material. • Question and answer (e.g.

about grammar, material work.)

• Exam/Study tips.

• Personal and family information (including photos).

• Extra writing practices on class topics.

• Regular comments on current affairs.

• Research and present information on a topic (e.g. an English-speaking country).

• A photoblog on learner's country, last holiday, town.

• Reactions to a film, article, class topic, current affairs.

• Things learners like/don't like doing in class.

• A class project on any topic.

This research focuses on the use of student blog in writing class. Students

have authority to own and manage their blogs in order to complete the writing

tasks. They could also share experiences, thoughts, or anything they interested in.

Meanwhile, teacher blog is used only as a complementary tool to publish

materials so that the students can access it whenever they want.

3. Blog in the Classroom

The use of blogs in the classroom will be discussed in this section. Blogs

are commonly found in form of short articles, journals, or personal diaries. Thus,

blogs can be utilized to teach language, especially writing skill. Like the other

media, blogs also have some strengths that promote the learning and weaknesses

to overcome.

a. Blog as Teaching-Learning Media

Teaching is not merely about transferring knowledge. Teachers need to

consider about the most suitable way of engaging students to be actively

participate in the process. A good combination of method or technique and media

to impart learning materials will support the effective teaching-learning activity.



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Therefore, media have a significant role in order to accomplish the objective of

teaching and learning. In teaching writing, supporting to Brown (1994), Appel

suggests the use of authentic materials in writing classroom as follows:

“For communicative language teaching writing had to be authentic, which meant it was supposed to be used in the classroom in the same way as in outside life—hence the emphasis on information processing, such as note-taking or filling in forms.” (Appel, 1995: 96)

Teachers can use blogs to upload learning materials, including the later

issues, and let the students to share their opinions in form of short articles or

comments. Although it belongs to written media, it allows two-way

communication between the writer and the reader. Warschauer (2010) states

“blogs thus represent a particularly effective tool to combine the publishing and

discussion of student writing in a single medium”. In addition, Cranmer in

Matthews, Spratt, and Dangerfield (1989: 94) says that learning writing without

reading examples of written communications which provide a model or guide is

not easy. The students need to have a plenty of models to differentiate and write

certain text types.

b. Teaching Writing Using Blog

Blogs can be set up to teach writing skill in more communicative way. It

has been utilized in many writing courses. Johnson (2004) says in his article:

Blogs have been successfully implemented into journalism, political science, and various junior high to university English writing courses for native English speakers. However, the use of blogs in teaching EFL appears to still be in its infancy but has much potential, especially in teaching written communication skills.

The students are supposed to master the ability of writing in order to have

the things done. They have to be able to communicate in written form and send

the message to the intended readers. Practicing writing in the classroom, the

students may work collaboratively within groups to make a project and use the

blog to publish it. In this term, teachers had the role to guide them and it will give

them more chance to explore their creativity.



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In order to give better understanding about the use of blogs, there is

suggestion of a complete classroom activity to use blog in the writing class (see

appendix List of Activities). It is stated as follows:

a. Teacher posts some blog links for the resources.

b. Teacher asks students to access the teacher blog form their personal

computer. Students work individually.

c. Students read the task on teacher blog and follow the link.

d. Students then write their personal comment on teacher blog and the

teacher does too.

e. Students then write a learning journal about what they have read in

previous activity and post the works on their own blogs.

f. After posting the task, students have to visit other friends’ blog pages to

post some comments.

g. During the lesson, teacher may follow the students’ activities online or as

the facilitator in the classroom.

c. Advantages and Disadvantages of Blog

There are some advantages of utilizing blogs to teach writing in the

classroom:

1) It promotes learning materials for students and helps teachers reflect their

teaching.

2) Blog posting can be used for evaluations; the criteria will probably

include: accuracy, fluency, coherence, and relevance.

3) All of the contents are viewable in chronological order and well-organized.

It allows the teacher and students to find information easily.

4) Students can learn more from the comments to their posts and get direct

feedback from the teacher online.

Despite blogs' beneficial role in helping the students to produce written

work, there are some disadvantages about blogs as follows:

1) Some features on blog page are not that simple to use, it may distract the

focus of the learning process.



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2) There is no specific notification when the content of the blog is edited, it

may cause some problems in evaluating the contents.

3) Once the students come online, they may open other webpages which is

not related to the target of learning.

C. Related Research

Blogs have become a new trend of learning tool in recent years.

Campbell (2003), in his article about the use of blogs in classes, has mentioned

three types of blog which are commonly used in education. Those are tutor blog,

student blog, and class blog. In addition, Godwin-Jones (2003) states that blogs

have come as a web of second generation which allows the writer manipulate or

personalized its content and appearance. He suggested some ways of utilizing

blog for learners, such as uploading and linking files, writing for broader readers,

having discussion forums, and it can be used as an electronic portfolio.

Johnson (2004) has reported his study on the Internet TESL Journal; it is

about utilizing class and student blogs in a writing course. In his study, Johnson

implements the use of blog for his writing course. The focus of his study is to

share the procedures of utilizing blog in the classroom. The study was conducted

in a graduate level scientific writing course taught in the spring of 2003. Johnson

uses two types of blog in his course, class blog and student blog. He creates a

class blog for general application related to learning materials, while the student

blogs are used to post or submit assignments privately. In his study, each student's

URL address is shared only between that student and the teacher. The result of the

study shows that utilizing blog in classroom can effectively maximize students’

access to class materials and exposure to teacher feedback (Johnson, 2004).

The use of blogs in the classroom is motivating for the learners (Brooks,

Nichols and Priebe, 2004). It can enhance effective instructional approaches that

emphasize writing for meaningful social purposes, mastery of relevant genres, and

development of students’ academic language proficiency (Warschauer, 2010).

Blogs also encourage the learners about ownership and responsibility since it is

publicly available to read (Lowe and Williams, 2004; Mynard, 2007).



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Additionally, Blog is an alternative way of communicating among teacher and

students and encourage the students to become autonomous learners, thus it can be

prompted as a reflecting tools of the learning process (Mynard, 2007).

D. Student Blog in Improving Writing Skills

The current curriculum in primary high school requires that the students

should be able to use the English at the functional level. It means that they can

communicate in both spoken and written form to solve daily activities.

Nevertheless, their skills, especially writing, are not improved yet since they

rarely practice it in real communication. Regarding to the way of communication

nowadays, students will be asked more to use technology. In the classroom,

students can now access the internet easily. They don't have to set a certain time

to go to the internet cafe. This facility provided by school, actually, can promote

the learning process through the use of ICT since it will motivate the students.

An alternative use of ICT is utilizing blogs to teach writing. Blogs serve

the real situation for writing class and provide more space for practices. When

students are asked to publish their writing since the first instruction, it is hoped

that they will be motivated to do best. Besides, blogs are completed with the

features which consist of formatting and editing toolbar. Those features may help

students in editing their works. In addition, teacher can give comments on

students' blog as a direct feedback, therefore students know about their skill.

Outside the class, students are also allowed to write the other personal intensions

to their blog. When the students enjoy the learning, it will promote the learning

process to gain success.

E. Action Hypothesis

Based on the theories and rationale above, the hypothesis is formulated

as follows: student blogs can improve the students' writing skill.



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CHAPTER III

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

The research in this paper was conducted by adopting the principles of

Action Research to investigate the problem, find out the solution, and note the

changes of condition which are related to the students’ writing skill and classroom

situation. This third chapter presents the methodology of the research starting

from the beginning until the end of it. It contains the context of the research,

method of the research, technique of collecting and analysing the data. The more

detail explanation will be presented in the following sections.

A. Context of the Research

1. The Setting of the Research

The research was carried out in SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri. It is located on

Jln. Kepodang V Wonogiri 57611. This school has become a school of RSBI

since three years ago. Not all of the students in this school belong to RSBI class.

Some of them are students of acceleration class. This school already uses the

curriculum of Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) as the basic teaching

and learning processes. According to the the Government Regulation No.

19/2005, KTSP is operational curriculum which is created by and carried out in

each level of education. It means that the school creates its own curriculum

including the plan, purpose, content, learning material, and the procedures as a

guide in order to achieve certain target of education.

The research was conducted in the first semester in the second grade

students of academic year 2010/2011. It was on August 2010 until January 2011.

The time setting includes the preparation stage up to the reporting stage as stated

in the following table.



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Table 3.1. Schedule of the Research

No. Activity Month

I II III IV V VI

1 Planning ü ü ü

2 Acting and Observing (Cycle 1) ü ü

4 Reflecting ü

5 Replanning ü

6 Acting and Observing (Cycle 2) ü ü

8 Reflecting ü

9 Data Analysis and Reporting ü ü

2. The Subject of the Research

The subject of this research was the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri

1 Wonogiri in the academic year of 2010/2011. It was the 8G class of RSBI. The

students in this class, who like to call themselves “Thei Golden”, had a better

learning ability than the other classes as stated by the teacher, “They can

understand the lesson easily and it is not so difficult to control them.” Having an

ideal number of students, 20, this class consists of 5 male and 15 female students

with an average writing skill in grade of eight.

B. The Method of the Research

1. Action Research

Action research is a process in which participants examine their own

educational practice systematically and carefully, using the techniques of research

(Ferrance, 2000: 1). Supporting to Ferrance, Wallace (1998: 4) states action

research is basically a way of reflecting on teaching which is done by

systematically collecting data on everyday practice and analyzing it in order to

come to some decisions about what the future practice should be.

Classroom action research begins with a question or questions about

classroom experiences, issues, or challenges. It is a reflective process which helps

teachers to explore and examine aspects of teaching and learning and to take

action to change and improve.



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Based on the considerations above, the study in this paper was conducted

under the scope of action research in order to give practical use of blog in the

classroom and improve the teacher's teaching technique in using new media.

2. The Procedure of Action Research

Burns (1999: 35) points out some phases in action research: exploring,

identifying, planning, collecting data, analysis/reflecting,

hypothesising/speculating, intervening, observing, reporting, writing, and

presenting.

a. Exploring

It is the starting point for undertaking some initial action, such as

documenting the general observation of situation in order to bring the

understanding about the problem. It may involve doing some reading of recent

articles or books to obtain ideas for research.

b. Identifying

This phase involves the recording or documenting observations which

relate to the research area. It helps to clarify the nature of the situation and

suggest to further action.

c. Planning

This involves developing a viable plan of action for gathering data, and

considering and selecting a range of appropriate research methods.

d. Collecting data

During this period, the procedures selected for collecting data are

developed and put into action.

e. Analysing/reflecting

This phase is considered as a combination of both analysis and reflection

since the close analysis of data is often the stimulus for reflection.

f. Hypothesising/speculating

In this phase, hypothesis is drawn out based on the data that have been

collected to this point, on the analysis and on the reflections that have arisen

from the analysis.



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g. Intervening

Intervening involves changing classroom approaches or practices in

response to the hypotheses one has made.

h. Observing

In observing the outcomes of the intervention and reflecting on its

effectiveness, a new set of teaching strategies and activities and recycling back

into a period of further data collection are involved.

i. Reporting

It involves articulating the activities, data collection and results that have

come out of the research process within the research group.

j. Writing

In this phase, the research questions, the strategies developed, the process

of the research, and the analyses and results observed are drawn together by

writing up an account in a report or article.

k. Presenting

This phase aims at ensuring that the research is presented to a wider

audience.

The procedure of an action research is done continuously through cycles.

Each cycle is initialized by planning the action after investigating the problems in

the classroom. After finishing the action and the observation, it comes to the

reflecting stage when all of the data are analyzed. This reflection is important to

find out the unsolved problem during the research and its final result. In order to

simplify the phases mentioned previously, action research is usually done in a

cycle. The cycle of research steps can be visually seen as follows:



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The classroom procedure of this research was conducted within two

cycles as listed in the table below.

Table 3.2. The Classroom Procedure of the Research

Cycle Procedures

I

Planning Teacher prepares everything related to the action that will be implemented in the classroom, including lesson plan and instruments for observation.

Acting Teacher implements the teaching and learning activities of writing on blogs as stated in the lesson plan.

Observing Teacher collaboratively observes all of the activities happening in the teaching and learning process and collects the data needed.

Reflecting

Teacher analyses the teaching and learning process and makes a judgment to revise the activities in order to improve the lack in cycle I. The results will determine whether it will be continued in the next cycle or not.

II

Replanning Teacher makes new lesson plan which contains the corrective planning.

Acting Teacher implements the teaching and learning activities of writing on blogs as stated in the lesson plan.

Observing Teacher collaboratively observing all of the activities happening in the teaching and learning process and collects the data needed.

Reflecting

Teacher analyses the teaching and learning process and makes a judgment to revise the activities in order to improve the lack in cycle II. The results will determine whether it will be continued in the next cycle or not.

Figure 1: The Individual Aspect in Action Research (Kemmis and McTaggart in Burns, 1999: 33)

1 Cycle

1 Cycle



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A. Technique of Collecting the Data

The data in this study were collected using two types of instrument; non-

test and test. However, both types of instrument used must be valid and reliable as

proposed by Wallace (1998: 36) that validity means testing what are supposed to

be tested. In addition, Weir says that the concern of reliability is how far the

results can be produced consistently (1998: 22). In short, the instrument used

should be able to measure what to be measured and to get the constant data for

different subjects or different times.

Some techniques of collecting the data are stated as follows:

1. Document

Document includes student portfolios of written work, student records and

profiles, lesson plans, classroom materials, and previous tests or examination

papers. It can be used to analyse to what extent the changes that have been

implemented are working (Burns, 1999: 140).

2. Questionnaires

Questionnaires are used to collect the data related to students feeling

toward the teaching and learning process in the terms of pre-research and post-

research. The questionnaire type that will be used is the one consisting closed

questions since it is easy to fill in and it provides more reliable scoring of the

responses (Wallace, 1998: 135).

3. Interview

The interview has been done in order to get the deeper data of responses

taken from questionnaires. In this research, the students will be asked some

open questions for further information; it is a type of semi-structured

interview (Wallace, 1998: 147).

4. Observation

Observation is a conscious notice of the classroom actions and occurrences

which are particularly relevant to the issues being investigated. It enables

researcher to document and reflect the classroom interactions that actually

occur (Burns, 1999: 80).



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5. Notes and diaries

Field notes are used to record the processes of learning and can be used to

record the observation during the learning process in classroom (Burns, 1999:

85). Diaries or journals are personal documents which are an alternative to

field notes. They contain more subjective and personal reflections and

interpretations than the relatively formalised recordings of note (Burns, 1999:

89).

6. Test

The test instrument is used to collect the data of students' writing skill. It

has been done in terms of pre-test and post test. The tests have been done in

the form of individual written test (formative assessment). It means that the

test was done after one topic discussion.

B. Technique of Analyzing the Data

Data analysis is the point where statements or assertions about what the

research shows are produced (Burns, 1999: 153). It involves describing and

explaining the data. The quantifiable data are analyzed by comparing their mean

taken from the pre-test and post-test. The formulas used in analyzing the data are:

n

XX

∑=

n

YY

∑=

in which:

X = mean score of pre-test

Y = mean score of post-test

n = number of students

X = pre-test score

Y = post-test score

Some of the data which are not quantifiable, such as opinions, attitudes,

or checklists, may be summarized in table form and can be analyzed without the

use of statistics or technical assistance. The method used in analysing is constant

comparative method as proposed by Glaser and Strauss. The stages are comparing

incidents applicable to each category, integrating categories and their phenomena,

delimit theory, and write theory (Glaser and Strauss in Hopkins, 1993: 149).



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Supporting to Glaser and Strauss, Lynch (1997: 139-154) explains the stages as

follows:

1. Focusing

The first step of data analysis is to focus the evaluation. It can be done

through developing a thematic framework that represents the most important

evaluation questions to be answered. It is usually started from the preliminary

thematic framework which was developed from a consideration of the

evaluation audience and goals. This framework is not linear and may be

revised, then constitute new thematic frameworks depending on the original

evaluation issues.

2. Organizing the data

In organizing the data, it should first be checked for completeness. Then,

the data need to be systematized in some way, so that the evaluator can easily

read it. Once the evaluator has the complete data, it is extremely important to

have the copies.

3. Coding the data

The use of code is emerge in organizing the data. The code should

represents the information in such a simple way. The codes may be put in the

margins or a separate note-taking sheet.

4. Classifying and reducing the data

It is a way of grouping the patterns and themes of the data. The data are

reduced through classification schemes such as category system, typologies,

and display matrices.

5. Interpretation and conclusions

It is the last stage of qualitative data analysis. It is the stage of drawing a

red line from the data which have been classified and reduced. This stage may

take a long time since the interpretation should be checked repeatedly.

Furthermore, the final conclusion should be checked for its validity.



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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH FINDING AND ANALYSIS

This chapter presents the results of the research conducted in the eighth

grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri. The research was purposed to identify

whether and to what extent the use of student blogs improve students' writing skill

and to analyze what happens when student blog is applied to teach writing. The

results will be described and discussed in four sub-headings: Situation Prior to the

Research, Research Implementation, Research Findings, and Discussion. It will be

explained separately in detail and summarized in the form of table.

A. Situation Prior to Research

Pre-observation was conducted before the action research

implementation in order to know the condition of the English class in RSBI 8G. It

was conducted within two meetings. The questionnaires were distributed to the

students in the second meeting to find out the writing problems based on their

point of view. From the questionnaire, it was noted that the students already knew

about blog, but 60% students never wrote any blog post. However, they are

interested in the use of internet (95%) as they often accessed it outside the class.

Furthermore, it was found on the observation that the students got

difficulty in doing writing task. It was indicated by their expressions that showed

disagreement about the teacher’s instruction when they were asked to write a

passage containing 10 sentences. In addition, the students did not have a

confidence about their writings as indicated by the reaction that ”they were kind

of refusing to ‘publish’ their descriptive text in other classes” (Research Diary,

18/08/2010).

Taken from the observation and interview notes, the causes of the

problem were emerged from the media used in teaching writing. The teacher did

not give any written model of the text in his teaching, “he directly told a story

about narrative text,” (Research Diary, 01/09/2010). Besides, the students also

rarely practiced to write a complete text, but sentences. They only had a lot of

grammar practices instead of writing in a certain context.



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Saya meminta ijin untuk melihat buku tugas salah satu siswa yang ada di meja tempat kami berbincang. Saya melihat ada banyak pekerjaan tentang grammar. Tugas yang diberikan adalah mengubah satu kalimat ke dalam berbagai bentuk (positif-negatif-tanya) (Pre-Interview Note).

Even though, the students already got the idea of their main text in the second

grade which was recount text.

Di sela-sela pelajaran, saya pernah menanyakan pada siswa apakah mereka tau tentang materi kelas 2 yang harus mereka kuasai, jenis teks apa saja yang akan mereka pelajari. Beberapa siswa menjawab dengan bahasa mereka yang sederhana, “Kalo kelas satu tu deskriptif Miss, kalo kelas dua recount. Dulu kelas satu pakenya present tense, kalo sekarang past tense.” “Ceritanya harus yang dulu-dulu, Miss. Kalo sekarang nggak boleh; udah kelas dua,” (Pre-Interview Note).

Once the teacher gave a model in the speaking class, but the students did not show

a good attitude toward the lesson.

Saya melihat ada beberapa siswa yang tidak terlalu memperhatikan kegiatan wawancara tersebut, tetapi justru berbicara dengan teman disebelahnya. Ada juga siswa yang mengakses internet sejak awal pelajaran tadi dan tampak cukup asyik dengan laptopnya. … Pak PG termasuk guru yang aktif dalam berinteraksi dengan siswanya, hanya saja beberapa siswa masih membutuuhkan perhatian lebih (Research Diary, 01/09/2010).

The pre-test was held in order to know the detail problems of students’

writing competence. From the result, it was found that the students’ mean score

was 74.45 and it was lower than the minimum standard which was 78. Here is

some common problems found in students’ writing (Student Worksheet A and

Student Worksheet B):

- My sister bought some new book story. (Worksheet no. 4A)

- Last Holiday, I at mountain. (Worksheet no. 6A)

- We view good scenery. (Worksheet no. 20A)

- One day after new year, i and my family played outbond in Griya Gayatri.

(Worksheet no. 1B)

- I was went to Internet caffe with my friend, his name is Ryan, we are played

Ninja Saga and Point Blank and after played game online I went back home.

(Worksheet no. 10B)

- This is my short story that to arrive for you. (Worksheet no. 19B)



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Based on the pre-observation, student documents, and the pre-test, it was

identified that the students’ writing skill should be improved. Therefore, the

student blog was used as the teaching-learning media during the writing class. It

was used as the main sources and the online worksheet that allowed the students

to explore their skill. Finally, the situation before the research is presented briefly

in Table 4.1.

Table 4.1. Situation Before the Research

Indicators Description a. Students’ Writing Skill

1) The students wrote words incorrectly. 2) Students used improper word within a sentence

(diction and context). 3) Students were not aware in using grammatical

aspects (tense, article, preposition, pronoun, phrasal verb, etc.).

4) Students wrote the sentence in wrong word order.

5) Students’ writing texts were sometimes incoherent.

6) There were mispunctuation in students' writing.

1) Students rarely consulted to dictionary and

mostly used their own interpretation about the word spelling in writing.

2) They tended to use the literal translation of word and did not use it in the proper context.

3) Students frequently made mistakes in writing grammatically correct sentences; once they made it, some details were forgotten, for example the articles.

4) They had the understanding of the composition, but mostly arranged the word in wrong order.

5) The ideas of the story were sometimes not well developed and the use of conjunctions were ambiguous in some cases.

6) Students rarely paid attention to the punctuation and it led to misinterpretation.

b. Mean Score The students’ mean score in post test was 74.45.

The mean score was lower than the school passing grade, which was 78.00.

c. Situation in the Writing Class 1) The students took longer time to start writing. 2) Some of them indicated not too interested in

the lesson. 3) Some students did not give full attention to the

teacher. 4) Students paid more attention to their laptop. 5) Some students did not have enough self-

confidence in their writing.

1) Students had a talk with their friends instead of

thinking about the task. 2) Some students seemed bored when they had to

wait and saw the model. 3) Some students liked to have chat with their next

friend while the teacher gave model. 4) Students who brought their own laptop were

more interested in it than the lesson. 5) Students preferred not to show and not to share

their writing to others.



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B. Research Implementation

The research was conducted for about six months in SMP Negeri 1

Wonogiri. It was done in collaboration with the English teacher of SMP Negeri 1

Wonogiri. The research was carried out in two cycles through the following

stages: pre-research, implementation, and reflection. The whole research is

presented in the form of table and followed by the detail.

1. Procedure of the Research

The research was initialized by observing the situation and condition of

the setting before any action was implemented. It was purposed to collect the first

data of the teaching-learning process. The pre-research activity was completely

done after the initial data were collected by means of questionnaire, interview, and

pre-test. Soon after the data were interpreted, a teaching plan was developed based

on it and the second stage of observation was started. The final findings were

drawn at the end of the research to conclude the reflection. The summary of the

research procedure is presented in Table 4.2.

Table 4.2. The Research Procedure Pre-research The researcher conducted pre-observation, interview, pre-test, delivered

questionnaire to find the problem in writing. Implementation The research was carried out in two cycles. Cycle 1 5 meetings:

1st meeting: creating blog account 2nd meeting: initial post, re-spelling words 3rd meeting: writing a paragraph based on a photo individually 4th meeting: using conjunction, writing a short story individually 5th meeting: editing text in group

Cycle 2 2 meetings: 1st meeting: direct quotation, writing learning journal individually guided

by teacher, commenting on post 2nd meeting: direct quotation, writing online journal individually

Overall Reflection

The students got improved their writing skill. It is indicated through the reduced intensity of the problem indicators in after research. The writing class situations were also improved.



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2. Cycle 1

a. Planning the action

In this stage, the lesson plan was made for the whole meetings in cycle 1.

It was planned to have five meetings which was conducted once a week. The

materials were taken from the internet and some of them were posted on the

teacher blog. It was about recount text as aimed in the curriculum.

Considering the students’ condition that they were really fond of being a

second grade student, the topic of the lesson was all the same for five meetings;

that was “school activities”. The main media used was student blog and the

worksheet was mostly in the form of blog page.


1) The first meeting

The lesson started at 8.20 a.m. It was the second lesson on that day in

RSBI 8G. At the beginning of the English class, the students were all ready to

learn. It seemed that they were too enthusiastic and “when I came in, they were all

vigorously turning on their laptop and got connected to the internet. It was quite

noisy in that morning,” (Research Diary, 06/10/2010). Unfortunately, the server

was not in a good condition as one student said, “Miss, pindah di luar kelas aja ya

Miss. Di sini nggak bisa, tapi di luar bisa,” (Research Diary, 06/10/2010). So,

they had to move the class outside the room. While waiting for the connection,

they were divided into 5 groups consisting of 4 persons.

After all of the students got a group, the class then moved again to the

hall. In the hall, each group had a task to create one blog account. At that time, the

connection was still unreached, so the students were getting noisy. Some of them

even got bored because of the very low connection. This activity “take a longer

time until the connection was accessible in recess,” (Research Diary, 06/10/2010).

Until the end of the first session, none of the groups had made the blog account

successfully.

During the recess, there were groups which stayed in the hall and kept on trying to create the account. In was note in Research Diary (06/10/2010):

“Ada 2 kelompok yang masih bersedia menghadapi laptopnya dan berusaha membuat akun blog. Kelompok pertama (birotrilili) berhasil membuat akun



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serta melakukan initial post … Sementara kelompok kedua (bloge8ge), waktu yang dibutuhkan sedikit lebih lama … .”

When the connection was getting better, that two groups could create the blog and

posted an initial text on it. For the rest of the group, “they still had no blog

account, but they had wrote the draft of the initial post,” (Research Diary,

06/10/2010). Finally, the class was finished at 9.55 a.m. after the class reflection.

2) The second meeting

The English class started at 8.20 a.m.. The topic in this meeting was still

about the blog account and its feature. Considering the previous meeting, all of the

tasks for this meeting were stated in the beginning of the lesson. The students

were asked to continue the previous posting and to revise it. Then, they had to

revise another paragraph having misspelled words on it. The purpose of this task

was to make the students familiar with a blog feature, spelling checker.

In this meeting, the representatives of each group wrote the name of their

blog and its addresses on the board, so that the they could visit their friends’

blogs. The name of the blog were Theigolden, Sunshine Theigolden, Birotrilili,

blogge8g, and thedeiia-thedeia (Research Diary, 20/10/2010).

The students worked in group with, at least, one laptop per group. They

had a small group discussion during the lesson. However, the seat arrangement

was not arranged properly since not all of the students worked in the classroom.

Then, “having given the instruction, more than half of the class went outside to

find a place which had a faster internet connection” (Research Diary, 13/10/2010).

They were allowed to go outside the class to find the better connection. The

corridor was the more preferable place than the classroom.

When it was coming to the end of the lesson, the students stopped

working online and the lesson was reflected. Then, the students were asked to

bring pictures (photographs) for the next meeting and they might discuss it in their

groups for the rest of the time.



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3) The third meeting

The third meeting was conducted at 8.20 – 9.55 a.m. It was done in two

sessions: “the first session was purposed to write the draft and the second session

was time for posting” (Research Diary, 20/10/2010). In this meeting, all of the

task were stated in the beginning of the lesson. The students were asked to write 5

sentences based on the pictures which they had brought. But then, they only had

to write 3 sentences describing one picture each person.

Started to do the task, the students worked in their group. Two groups

were working effectively since they had only five pictures. While the other two

groups, worked less effective because they had some stocks of photographs in

their laptop. They got confusion in deciding which photos were better to publish

on the blog as “I did not tell them to bring the sequenced photos”. It was supposed

to let them work individually and made them not “not riveted on a rule in

writing,” (Research Diary, 20/10/2010).

There were two sessions in this meeting, the offline and online working.

In the offline working, the students wrote their sentences about the photos on their

papers or directly type it on their laptops. During this process, they might have

discussion with other friends and consult their work to the teacher. Unfortunately,

they also tried an alternative way to consult the translator:

Seorang siswa berkata kepada temannya yang sulit untuk menerjemahkan kalimatnya ke dalam bahasa inggris, “Iki lho, nganggo Google Translate. Tulisen neng kono,“ (Research Diary, 20/10/2010).

Finishing the offline work, they started to log on the group blogs. Each

group had to post their works including the photos that they described. The result

of the post was vary since not all group posted the works in one post. They

preferred to post it individually or one post for two persons.

4) The fourth meeting

The fourth meeting was scheduled at the same time as previous meetings,

8.20 – 9.55 a.m. The lesson begun with the review of the previous lesson. Then,

the students got a model of short recount text taken from a blog post which was



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projected through the LCD. The students should pay attention on the use of

conjunction and word order (my friends and I).

Once the students got enough model and explanation, they were given an

exercise to rearrange jumbled paragraphs based on its content and the use of

conjunctions. The next exercise was about correcting the punctuation and

capitalization of a paragraph. All of the exercises were done together orally.

After that, the students got an assignment to write a short story on the

worksheet. They had to write 3 paragraphs about the school activity. The

instruction was written clearly on the worksheet. After all students got the paper,

they started to work individually. During the writing, some of them asked for

some helps from their friends and consulted the work to the teacher. At the end of

the session, all of the students had finished the story and collected the worksheet

to the teacher.

5) The fifth meeting

It was the last meeting in cycle 1. The lesson started at 9.00 a.m. and

finished at 10.15 a.m. On that day, there was a ceremony before the first lesson, so

that the schedule was changed. The situation did not really support to have a

lesson, but “when I was coming to the end of the ladder-steps, one student who

was outside her class greeted me cheerfully” (Research Diary, 10/11/2010).

The meeting begun with a review of previous lesson which was related to

the students’ last stories. After that, it was continued by new topics: past tense and

preposition (time and place). It was rather different from the previous meeting that

“the students noted what I had explained explained about the grammar rules,”

(Research Diary, 10/11/2010). Additionally, the material was not only about the

use of past tense and preposition, but also the common mistakes found in

students’ writing.

…selain materi past tense dan preposition, saya juga menyampaikan kesalahan yang cukup sering ditemui pada pekrjaan kemarin. Diantaranya, penggunaan tobe dan penulisan ‘then’, serta penempatan kata ‘there’. Di tengah-tengah saya menyampaikan materi, ada siswa yang berkata lirih, ‘Tumben aku pinter,’ sambil tersenyum (Research Diary, 10/11/2010).



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The materials were accessible on teacher blog, so the students might access when

they came online. Finishing the note taking, the students had a task to revise

another blog post. They had to revise the use of tenses, punctuation, preposition,

and spelling on the post (Research Diary, 10/11/2010). The students should

discuss the text in group and report their finding. At the end of the lesson, all

groups had found and revised all of the mistakes on the post.

c. Observing the action


The crowded situation indicated students’ high enthusiasm toward the

lesson. They were so eager to have an internet connection in the classroom during

the lesson and free usage of their laptop. Previously, they never had any task to

use the laptop in English class. The students were asked to make groups. They

might decide the members of the groups. It was a good idea to let them choose the

member themselves, but there were only 5 male students who did want to join the

other groups. However, the groups were fixed as noted in the diary:

Dengan adanya pilihan, siswa menjadi bertambah ribut. Akhirnya saya putuskan untuk tetap membentuk kelompok yang terdiri dari 4 anggota dan ada seorang siswa laki-laki yang bersedia mengalah untuk masuk ke dalam kelompok lain (Research Diary, 06/10/2010).

The internet connection was firstly utilized for a lesson in this class, but

there was a problem with the server. As a result, the learning process could not be

effectively conducted. “Technical problem of the web might happen anytime,

especially when the server was lost,” (Research Diary, 06/10/2010), so that there

should be another plan to cope with this situation, otherwise the posting on blog

would take longer time.

The class situation could not be well controlled yet, the students was in

the stage of blog introduction and the problem occurred on the internet connection

made the students dejected. Besides, the students’ euphoria had an effect to the

learning focus which was creating an account. There were 3 groups which could

not finish the registration in this meeting.



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“Kelompok 3, 4, dan 5 kurang berhasil dalam membuat akun blog karena terlalu lama mengakses situs lainnya, sedangkan persiapan grup tidak bisa dikoordinasi dengan baik. Sambil menunggu pergerakan akses yang cukup lambat, saya meminta mereka untuk menulis dulu materi posting pertamanya pada program Miscrosoft Word.” (Research Diary, 06/10/2010).

As a consequence, they had to continue it in after school. They accessed the other

websites when the connection was low so that they did not work maximally.


It was found that the students did not like to have any printed work in this

subject. They did not do the task given in the last meeting. Once again, the

problem on internet connection affected the class condition that made the students

dejected to access the blog in group. The presence of their English teacher in the

class was very helpful in controlling the students and monitoring the process as

noted in Research Diary that “during the activity, Mr. PG accessed students’ blogs

online with his laptop; he also helped me to monitor the students” (13/10/2010).

Some students got difficulty in using the features on blog since it was

something new for them. Besides, the blog was set up in English instead of

Indonesian. The improvement on students’ effectiveness was indicated when they

kept on the blogging and accessed the other websites after finishing the task. It

was noted that:

Pada pertemuan sebelumnya, siswa masih tidak bisa meninggalkan facebook. Sembari mengakses blogger.com, siswa juga mengakses situs lain terlalu banyak sehingga pekerjaan mereka banyak yang tertunda. Pada pelajaran kali ini, siswa mau menunggu tugas selesai sebelum mengakses situs lainnya (Research Diary, 13/10/2010).

Some of them liked to stay in the classroom and did the task seriously during the

recess. There was something unchanged yet, that “the students still gave short

answers when I asked them, although it seemed that they were so interested in

what they were doing” (Research Diary, 13/10/2010). It showed that that the

better strategies in communicating with the students were needed.



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3) The third meeting

Unlike the previous, the students brought the pictures as assigned in the

last meeting. They should bring 1 picture each person, but some groups had a

folder and they had not decided which pictures to pick. It made the group to “have

longer time in deciding which pictures to do the task on that day,” (Research

Diary, 20/10/2010).

The students were not sure that the picture they bring would help them to

developed a good paragraph, they said “Miss, ini gimana ngurutinnya. Kan

fotonya beda-beda, Miss?” (Research Diary, 20/10/2010). Consequently,

although some of them worked effectively, some were still not. They were too

busy about the picture editing instead of the paragraph writing.

Because of the condition—that the students couldn’t not completely

focus on the task, they asked for dispensation, they asked whether they could

write only 3 instead of 5 sentences. Then, “I allowed them for the first target—

students’ willingness—had been fulfilled, other than indicators which were listed

on the lesson plan,” (Research Diary, 20/10/2010).

The focus was writing in past tense, and some of them not only wrote

simple sentences but also compound sentences. It was mentioned in Research

Diary that “I read some sentences written by the students, they were good enough

in using various sentence types. The use of passive voice and compound sentences

were vary in such degree,” 20/10/2010).

The writing process took a quite long time since the students had no idea

how to start the paragraph, then “I helped them by asking some questions” to

generate the ideas (Research Diary, 20/10/2010). In addition, the class condition

did not allow the whole monitoring in a sight. When the students working outside

the class wanted to consult the result, they had to wait for the teacher coming from

the class. There was 2 groups working in the classroom and the other 3 groups

worked outside the classroom. Thus, the presence of the teacher was so important

as noted in the Research Diary:

Selama kegiatan berlangsung, pak PG membantu saya mengawasi siswa dan memberikan bantuan kepada siapa saja yang bertanya. Saya melihat, beliau juga memberikan saran dan koreksi kepada beberapa siswa secara



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langsung. Siswa tampak terbantu dengan adanya konsultan saat mengerjakan tugas. (20/10/2010).

Having some students use the translator, it showed that:

Beberapa siswa di kelompok ini (Siswa A dan B) cukup kreatif untuk memanfaatkan teknologi sebagai penunjang kegiatan belajarnya. Hanya saja mereka menjadi terlalu bergantung pada translator dan kurang berusaha menulis kalimatnya sendiri (Research Diary, 20/10/2010).

Additionally, the students had the interest on this lesson. At the end of

the lesson, “they thought that I would not teach them next week. Even, someone

asked, ‘Yaah Miss, berarti besok udah nggak ngajar di sini lagi?’” (Research

Diary, 20/10/2010).

4) The fourth meeting

Since the very moment before the class started in that morning, the

students showed a great enthusiasm in their greeting. They also paid full attention

when the teacher gave a review of previous works and the model of the new

material. They did the exercises carefully and could finish it within a short time. It

shows that their understanding of the material had improved having enough

model, though some of the posts were still mispunctuated (Research Diary,

3/11/2010).

Soon after got the worksheet, the students started to write any draft on it.

Some of them made notes on their own papers, then rewrote the complete story on

the worksheet. They had various techniques in their writing that differed one to

another. It was also found one student noted all the key words she needed and

some important sentences which were then became the main ideas of the story.

Another student asked “Miss, kalau ceritanya lebih dari 3 paragraf nggak

papa?” (Research Diary, 3/11/2010). It indicates that she had a great interest on

writing, although the time was limited. It seemed that she enjoyed her writing. She

considered this as a chance for sharing her experience.

There was one student seemed so serious in doing the writing. She

consulted her work to the dictionary. But, she was too shy and did not want to

show her work until it had been submitted as noted in the Research Diary :



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Saya menemukan seorang siswa yang sedikit berbeda. Ketika saya mendekat, dia malu untuk menunjukkan pekerjaannya. Kemudian saya amati dari jauh, dia jarang bertanya pada temannya tetapi bisa menyelesaikan tugasnya hanya dengan bantuan kamus (3/11/2010).

The class situation was conducive although the seat arrangement was not properly set. All students did the writing in the classroom. Some of them sat in a group and some other students sat individually. It was noted something different from the previous meeting, “the students tended to translate word per word instead of the complete sentence using a translator,” (Research Diary, 3/11/2010). Most of the students had common mistakes in their writing which were noted in Research Diary (3/11/2010):

- The sentence construction: I felt so happy / I was very happy / we felt very

titred / we were very excited

- The use of ‘this’ instead of’that’

- Students wrote ‘at there’ which should be ‘…there’

- Misspelled the word: ‘and than’ instead of ‘and then’

- The use of preposition of time and place

5) The fifth meeting

The fifth meeting was not in a good condition. This meeting should

spend 2x45 minutes, but it started a bit late than it was supposed because the

students had to finish the sweeping first. Moreover, there were 2 students absent

in the English class to have another activity held by the school organization.

The students had still wrong assumption about the use of to be and past

participle. It was found in their previous works that they wrote passive voice

instead of past tense, for example:

- But Mr. Joko was ordered me to play with my other girl friend,... (Worksheet

2B)

- Yesterday, I was played footsal with my friends, ... (Worksheet 10B)

However, they had a better understanding about the use of prepositions.

They could actively participate as described below:

Mereka menyampaikan pemahaman mereka tentang penggunaan preposisi hampir bersamaan ketika saya menyebutkan kegunannya pada kalimat. Seorang siswa bahkan ada yang menjawab dengna suara cukup lantang saat saya menyebutkan penggunaan preposisi tempat “at”. Siswa tersebut



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menyebutkan salah satu penggunaannya pada kalimat yang menunjukkan suatu jalan dan didahului dengan nomor rumah (Research Diary, 10/11/2010).

They could keep their attention on the explanation and work efficiently

though it was not finished because of the limited time. The students paid full

attention to the lesson besides their good ability to understand the explanation.

They even could immediately correct the misspelled word during the explanation.

Taken from the Research Diary (10/11/2010), the students paid full attention, even

when there was a slip on writing ‘hari’ became ‘hary’, they immediately corrected

it, “Miss, ‘hari’-nya nggak pake ‘y’, Miss. Itu pake ‘i’.” At the end of the lesson,

for the work was unfinished, finally “students’ work were not published, yet I had

observed that most of them had ideas to make the text better,” (Research Diary,

10/11/2010).


There were found some improvements on the students’ attitude toward

the lesson and the class situation. At first, the students were reluctant and not too

interested when they were asked to write in English. But then, they did the task

with no further discussion on it since the process was done continuously starting

from writing simple sentences to longer paragraphs. In addition, the students also

paid more attention to the instruction before they did the task. Their interest on the

laptop was facilitated and supported in utilizing the blog which motivated them to

finish the task, although at the beginning they could not completely focus on the

lesson yet. Meanwhile, the problems occurring on the internet connection had an

impact to the learning target because the time allocation could not cope with this.

Basically, blog deals with the use of soft file data form. This

phenomenon attracted the students since they did not have to submit any

homework in the form of worksheet. Nevertheless, in some meetings having

paper-based activity, the better worksheet was needed. As a result, the

improvements of students’ writing skill could not easily be documented.



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However, the students brought the photographs as homework in the third

meeting. It means that they prefer the soft file to the hard file.

It was not because the students’ low ability to understand the instruction,

but it was the instruction itself which was not so clear. In the second meeting, the

instruction was only to bring any picture without further explanation that the

students would be asked to write a paragraph about it. However, it could motivate

or stimulate the students to catch ideas from anything they saw.

The progresses were also occurring on the students’ writing skill. It

included the better writing coherence and less misspelled words. It was indicated

in their post about the pictures, they could arrange it chronologically. Meanwhile,

the use of spelling checker in posting helped the students correct it. Supporting to

the statement, the result of post-test 1 indicated the improvement of writing skill

up to 11.85%. Taken from the pre-test, the students only got 74.45 as the mean

score, but in the post-test 1 they got 82.18.

In summary, the improvement of the students’ learning and achievement

can be drawn as in the following table.

Table 4.3. The Improvement of the Students’ Learning and Achievement in the End of Cycle 1 Data Source Before the Action After the Action

- Student documents - Questionnaire - Observation - Interview - Pre-test - Post-test 1

a) Teaching and learning process - Teacher did not give enough model

for writing. - Students did not pay full attention to

the teacher. - No media were used in teaching

learning process. - The instruction of writing in certain

number of sentences were not easily accepted.

- Students had a bit confidence to publish their writing.

b) Writing ability - The students only wrote the main

ideas with a little supporting details. - The text organization was not clear. - The students had limited range of

vocabulary and used it improperly within a context.

- There were frequent errors in the use of tenses, agreement, word order, pronoun, and preposition.

- There were frequent errors of spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

a) Teaching and learning process - Teacher gave models on teacher blog. - Teacher used student blog as the

media and other weblogs for the resources.

- There were only few students negotiating the number of sentences to write.

- Students had better confidence about their writing on blog.

b) Writing ability - The students added more details on

their writing in longer paragraph. - The students arrangement of text was

better, but the idea was loosely connected/organized.

- The choice of words was better in context.

- There were still frequent errors in the use of tense and word order.

- There were still occasional errors of punctuation and capitalization.



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Test Score The mean score of pre-test: 74.45 The mean score of post-test 1: 82.18

Problems to solve 1. The students’ low interest and attitude in English lesson, especially writing class.

2. The students’ low writing skill.

1. The time management related to the classroom situation (internet connection).

2. They still made frequent errors in using preposition of place and time.

3. There were still some students who were not so confident with their writing.

3. Cycle 2

a. Revising the plan

Considering the reflection in cycle 1, the research was continued to the

second cycle. There was some unsolved problems related to students’ writing skill

and the surrounding situation in the first cycle that needed further action. Those

problems were: the lack of text organization, vocabulary used and the language

use. The students need more practices on those topics, that was by writing

journals. The first lesson was learning journal writing, then continued by writing

online journal as a part of English class activities.

The revised plan was about giving more time for personal writing, while

accessing any website would give the students ideas for writing. They would have

one computer per one student in order to give them more spaces to explore their

interest that would motivate them to write. And the last, they should share their

comments on other students’ post so that they could be more confident.

One way of overcoming the unpredictable connection was preparing

tasks which could be conducted offline if some computers were broken. Besides,

the way of pointing the instruction was also changed.



The meeting was conducted at 8.20 a.m. until 9.55 a.m. The lesson

started with the review on the result of post-test 1. Then, it should be continued by

presenting text on LCD projector and explaining about the use of quotation mark

in a journal writing, but unfortunately there was a problem with the laptop used.



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Therefore, the class was moved to the computer laboratory. Most of the students

yelled for getting this information.

In the lab, each student had a personal computer and they were all so

excited to go online. While waiting for the computer to be ready for a connection,

the students listened to the instruction. They had to access the teacher blog, read

the sample material, then they had to write their own learning journal. After

accessing teacher blog, they did the task by accessing their own group blog.

Ada juga beberapa siswa yang mengerjakan tugas pada program komputer (Microsoft Word) untuk dipost setelah selesai nanti. Selain itu, saya juga melilhat ada siswa yang menerjemahkan contoh jurnal untuk memahami isinya, baru kemudian dia menulis jurnalnya (Research Diary, 08/12/2010).

The students were allowed to use any dictionary and had a discussion

with their friends. Most of them also consulted their work to the teacher before

posted it on blog. Finishing the post, they had to access other students’ blog and

give their comments, so that they could access the blog more than other webpages

(Research Diary, 08/12/2010). At the end of the lesson, the students got a review

of what they had done. Then, they were all back to the classroom.


It was the last meeting in cycle two. At first, the students were given a

review of the previous meeting. Then, they were asked to move to the lab. All of

the instructions were stated in the class, so that the students could immediately

work individually there.

In the first session, the students only had to access any website or blog

page they wanted. They could freely access the internet for about 25 minutes. It

seemed that the lesson was so under control. Coming to the computer lab, the

students turned on the computer eagerly.

…segera para siswa menghadapi masing-masing satu computer dan menghidupkannya. Saat itu, masih ada siswa yang bertanya, “Miss, kalau yang dibuka blognya sendiri boleh nggak?” Saya memberi siswa kebebasan untuk mengakses alamat website apa pun (Research Diary, 05/01/2011).



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Some students accessed their blogs and teacher blog, and the other

students accessed other blog pages, online news and social networking websites

(facebook and twitter). Some of the websites visited have been noted down in

Research Diary as follows:

… antara lain yang berhubungan dengan resensi buku dan film, berita-berita olah raga, blog yang mendskripsikan tokoh tertentu, website yang menyediakan beberapa kata-kata motivatif, bahkan ada juga siswa yang memilih untuk mengakses blog milik temannya atau milik sendiri, termasuk teacher blog (05/01/2011).

In the second session, the students had to write a recount text telling their

activity in that lesson. The text should be about the web pages that they had

visited. They also had to put any quotation taken from those web pages. The

students worked individually, but they might have any discussion. Most of them

consulted their works to the teacher besides the used of online dictionary. When

they finished, they accessed other students’ posts and gave their comments.

c. Observing the action


It was the first time for the students to have personal access of their blog

individually. When each person sat in front of a computer, the situation was

almost uncontrolled. But, the students could handle themselves to paid attention to

the instruction. All what they had to do was accessing the teacher blog and writing

a learning journal. In doing so, they spent almost the whole time to write and edit

their work.

In the early step, it was found that one student tried to use the online

translator in order to have a better understanding of the example on teacher blog.

She was so eager to read it and the use of translator help her find the meaning of

some vocabularies. However, she did not use the translator to translate her work,

except the words she needed. Not far from this student, there were two other

students who accessed the online translator. They typed the work in the computer

program (Microsoft Word), then tried to translate the difficult sentences. They

also consulted the result to the teacher before finally published it.



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At first, the students should have the model in the classroom before going

online. But unfortunately, there was a problem with the laptop for the

presentation. Then, the class was moved to the lab. Some students decided to

bring their own laptop there, considering their euphoria (Research Diary,

08/12/2010). Even though the situation indicated that all students impatiently

turned on the computer which may lead to other problems, they could restrain

themselves not to access other websites unless they had finished the work or

during the recess. Taken from the Research Diary (08/12/2010), the situation was

described as follows:

Selama menulis, siswa tampak serius manghadapi layar komputernya. Pada setiap kesempatan mengakses internet, ada saja siswa yang membuka akun facebook selama pelajaran, tapi pada pertemuan ini mereka bisa bersabar untuk menyelesaikan perkerjaan terlebih dahulu dan mengakses facebook pada jam istirahat. … Siswa memberikan reaksi positif pada tugas yang diberikan dan mampu menyelesaikan tugas tanpa terlalu banyak mengakses situs lainnya lagi.


Almost all students eagerly said, “Yes!” when they were told to have a

class in the computer laboratory again. It indicated that they were very interested

to have another online activity. Unfortunately, there were some computers having

troubles, so that some students had to work in pairs. The students got a task to

access any websites that they like most during the first session.

Not all of the students accessed other blog pages, they preferred the

social networking website and the ones containing news. Those students accessing

the blog, they visited their own blog and the teacher blog. The students looked so

serious in reading the content.

There was a problem on the computers that made some students had to

work together with their friends. The computers they used were not able to have

an internet connection. For those who brought personal laptop asked for

permission to use it during the lesson. This problem, however, came to positive

effect which was continuously observed:

…dari hasil pengamatan saya sejak pertemuan-pertemuan sebelumnya (Persiapan 1, Meeting 2 Cycle 1, dan Meeting 1 Cycle 2), siswa yang biasa



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berdekatan dengan teman yang dipilihnya sendiri mampu memberikan motivasi untuk menyelesaikan tugas lebih cepat dan lebih baik. Selama proses di kelas, mereka mampu berdiskusi dan memecahkan masalah dengan sedikit konsultasi (Research Diary, 05/01/2011).

In the next session, the students wrote a text telling about what they had

done and what pages they had read. This task was similar to the previous one,

writing a journal, but there were still some students getting confused. They did not

sure how to start the writing. Then, they were helped by some questions to

generate the ideas. Additionally, some of them used online dictionary and the

others tried to finish it without any help of dictionary. As a result, a lot of them

felt satisfied after the posting (Research Diary, 05/01/2011).


It was firstly planned that the students could start to use the drafting to

generate their idea before writing, but there was not enough changes given during

the learning process. However, taken from the result of post-test 1 and 2, there

was improvement in the draft written. In the post-test 1, some students still wrote

the draft in form of word phrases, but then in the post-test 2 most of them wrote it

in the form of clauses including the time connectors.

In addition, the students were more excited during the learning process

from time to time. They could actively respond the instruction and even there

were no more students bargaining the task. Basically, the students in this class

were all having high motivation in learning, but not all of the students were

interested in writing. After the end of cycle 2, it was found that some students,

who had no blog account before, had made one for personal use. It indicated that

they were more interested in writing than before.

The overall reflection about the students writing score, there was an

improvement on it. After the cycle 2, there mean score of students’ writing test

was 86.60. It was higher than the mean score of post- test 1 which was 85.90.



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Table 4.4. The Improvement of the Students’ Learning and Achievement in the End of Cycle 2 Data Source Before the Action After the Action

- Observation - Interview - Post-test 1 - Post-test 2

a) Teaching and learning process - Teacher gave models on teacher blog. - Teacher used student blog as the media

and other weblogs for the resources. - There were only few students negotiating

the number of sentences to write. - Students had better confidence about their

writing on blog.

b) Writing ability - The students added more details on their

writing in longer paragraph. - The students arrangement of text was

better, but the idea was loosely connected/organized.

- The choice of words was better in context. - There were still frequent errors in the use

of tense and word order. - There were still occasional errors of

punctuation and capitalization.

a) Teaching and learning process - The models and other resources were

posted on teacher blog. - The students also used their blog in

commenting. - The students did the task eagerly. - No more students were reluctant to share

their writings.

b) Writing ability - The students could write a text in better

quantity and quality. They could share their ideas coherently, even some stories containing social messages. They could also produce better detail of the story.

- The texts were much better organized and could be smoothly followed.

- The students had more vocabulary to use in proper context. They consulted to dictionary and use the spelling checker

- The students produced correct form of past tense, instead of passive voice. The errors in word order could be reduced through students’ experiences.

- There were only minor problems/errors in punctuation.

Test Score The mean score of post-test 1: 82.18 The mean score of post-test 2: 84.50

The problems/weaknesses which must be solved: 1. The time management related to the classroom situation (internet connection). 2. They still made frequent errors in using preposition of place and time. 3. There were still some students who were not so confident with their writing.

The final result of the research:

1. Teaching and learning process - The students interested in the lesson which mostly done online. - The students’ attention was fully transferred to the explanation and instruction, even they could

corrected the slip happened. - Students’ interest on laptop (and computer) was supported so that finally they could finish the task. - They didn’t mind when their writing were published and even they like the commenting session.

There was no more student who did not like to be checked during the process of writing. - The classroom interaction was set informally. - The student blog was mainly used as the media and complemented by other weblogs.

2. Writing ability - Developing the idea. The students could write a text in better quantity and quality. They could share

their ideas coherently, even some stories containing social messages. They could also produce better detail of the story.

- Organizing the text. The texts were much better organized and could be smoothly followed. - Vocabulary mastery. The students had more vocabulary to use in proper context. They consulted to

dictionary and use the spelling checker - Language use. The students produced correct form of past tense, instead of passive voice. The errors

in word order could be reduced through students’ experiences. - Mechanics. There were only minor problems/errors in punctuation.



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C. Findings

The research findings were gathered for several sources of data. The

findings included the effectiveness of using blog to improve students’ writing skill

and the classroom situation during the learning process. The overall findings were

summarized in Table 4.5 as follows.

Table 4.5. Summary of the Research Findings Research Findings Before Action Research After Action Research

a. The improvement of the students’ writing skill

1) The students wrote words incorrectly.

2) Students used improper word within a sentence (diction and context).

3) Students were not aware in using grammatical aspects (tense, article, preposition, pronoun, phrasal verb, etc.).

4) Students wrote the sentence in wrong word order.

5) Students’ writing texts were sometimes incoherent and had only few details.

6) There were mispunctuation in students' writing.

1) Students consulted to dictionary and use the spelling checker

2) The use words were better in context. 3) The students produced correct form of

past tense, instead of passive voice. 4) The errors in word order could be reduced

through students’ experiences. 5) The students could share their ideas

coherently, even some stories containing social messages. They could also produce better detail of the story.

6) The students had better sentence and paragraph writing dealing with the use of punctuations.

b. The achievement of the students’ test score

The students’ mean (74.45) score was under the passing grade (78.00). The students who passed the grade were only 35%.

The students’ mean score was increasing up to 84.50 at the end of cycle 2. The number of students who passed the grade was 100%.

c. The improvement of classroom situation

1) The students spent long time for writing short passages.

2) Some of them indicated not too interested in the lesson.

3) Some students did not give full attention to the teacher.

4) Students paid more attention to their laptop.

5) Some students did not have enough self-confidence in their writing.

1) The students could write a text in better quantity and quality within the same time allotment

2) The students interested in the lesson which mostly done online

3) The students’ attention were fully transferred to the explanation and instruction, even they could corrected the slip happened.

4) Students’ interest on laptop (and computer) were supported so that finally they could finish the task.

5) They didn’t mind when their writing were published and even they like the commenting session. There was no more student who did not like to be checked during the process of writing.

6) The classroom interaction was set informally.

d. The improvement of students’ behaviour

1) The students did not great the researcher when met outside the class.

2) The students could not keep their patience to have the next

1) The students greeted in a great enthusiasm anywhere they met.

2) The students did not worry about the next class and showed disappointment when the lesson was ended as one students said,



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class. 3) There were no response at the

end of the lesson. 4) Only few students who actively

participated in the lesson.

“Yaah Miss, berarti besok udah nggak ngajar di sini lagi?”

3) More students sharing their opinions and understanding to their friends and proposed a topic for the writing.

1. The improvement of the students’ writing skill

The use of student blog as a teaching learning media had improved the

students’ writing skill. Referring to result of the pre-test and post-test, the

students’ mean score was improved 10.05 %. However, not all aspects of writing

were constantly improved. The complete mean score was presented in the table

below.

Table 4.6. The Improvements of the Students’ Achievement Aspects C O V LU M Total Improvement

Pre Test 22.18 16.25 14.93 17.85 2.50 74. 45

Post Test 1 23.55 17.25 17.43 20.08 3.88 82.18 7.72 %

Post Test 2 23.93 17.85 17.58 21.05 4.10 84.50 2.33 %

C: Content O: Organization V: Vocabulary LU: Language Use M: Mechanics

Based on the table, it can be concluded that the students had a good

achievement at the end of the research. Their score was increasing from cycle 1 to

cycle 2. Furthermore, the number of students who passed the test increased up to

100% in the post test 2.

Figure 4.1. Chart of Number of Students Passing the Test

There were three students coming from different level of intelligence

who got more attention in this research. The improvement of them is summarized

as follows.



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Table 4.7. The Sample of Students’ Achievement Student A (OE) Students B (RDA) Student C (NH)

Pre-test 81.50 78.00 65.00 Post-test 1 85.00 82.00 75.50 Post test 2 89.50 84.00 79.00 Mean score 85.33 81.33 73.12

Student A is a clever student. She got good scores in pre-test and post

test. She made a little mistakes in her writing. She could easily understand the

explanation and instruction given. She needed no special treatment during the

research. After the research she had better writing skill than before the research

and interested to write better story (narrative text).

Student B is a students in average. She had a good motivation and active

during the lesson. Using student blog as the main media, she had a better writing

skill although there were several problems faced in the use of blog.

Student C is a student in the lower level. She had low motivation in

writing. She tended to use any translation tools to finish the task. There were

special treatments to make her independently did the writing. As a result, she had

a better writing skill and more confidence to make it herself.

In conclusion, the sample students got improved their writing skill. It was

shown in the result of their achievements and their attitudes.

2. The improvement of the classroom situation

Comparing to the classroom situation before the research, there were

some positive progresses. The students were firstly more interested in minding

their own business in the class. But then, they became aware of what the lesson is

about and paid more attention to the lesson. The use of blog in the classroom

could rise students’ interest on writing class. They had responded differently on

the statement: Dengan menggunakan blog selama pelajaran di kelas, saya

menjadi tertarik dengan pelajaran menulis (writing) (Pre-Questionnaire).

Compared to the question on Post-Questionnaire whether they were interested in

writing class, the result showed that the number of student who like it had

increased.



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Figure 4.2. Chart of Students’ Interest on Writing

Moreover, the use of laptop and computer could finally be controlled and

directed to focus on learning process. The informal setting of class helped the

students in consulting their works and they were not afraid of sharing it to the

others. They even enjoyed the activity of reading their friend comments on posts.

3. The improvement of the students’ attitude

The students’ attitudes were also changing during the research. They had positive

perspectives as they greeted in a great enthusiasm anytime they met. They could

also enjoy the class and showed disappointment when the lesson was ended as one

students said, “Yaah Miss, berarti besok udah nggak ngajar di sini lagi?” Coming

to the end of the research, more students shared their opinions and understanding

to their friends and proposed topics for the writing.

Reported on the Post Questionnaire result, the students would like to

have another writing class that utilized blog (60%). Although it was not

continued, they wanted to write more on blog (70%) and even most of them were

going to create new personal blog account (80%). One student said that she

wanted to write story (narrative text) in English instead of Indonesian (Post-

Interview Note). Furthermore, the students could draw some advantages of using

blogs as follows (Post-Interview Note):

“Bisa lebih mengeluarkan aspirasi, melepas penat belajar, memanfaatkan internet dengan sisi positif, lebih tau tentang blog.” (Ningtyas)



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“Manfaatnya banyak banget, contohnya bias belajar sambil bermain, bias cari hal-hal yang baru dalam belajar bahasa inggris baik soal maupun short story, dan bias mengeluarkan aspirasi kita untuk dibagikan kepada orang lain.” (Rosiana)

D. Discussion

This section presents the discussion of the research findings focusing on

students’ writing skill and classroom situation. In more detail, each of the findings

is presented as follows.

1. Student blog is able to improve students’ writing skill

The implementation of student blog as teaching-learning media had

improved the students’ skill of writing. The focuses of the research involve five

aspects of writing skill: content of the text, organization of the idea, vocabulary

mastery, language use, and mechanics. The findings show that those aspects had a

higher final achievement after the research.

The improvement of ideas writing is shown in the finding that some texts

contained social messages and some others were combined with imaginative

ideas. It was also organized nicely so that the topics were developed into

interesting texts and could communicate the messages well. This result is

supported by Bram (1995: 25) who states that the purpose of writing is

communication. Furthermore, Warschauer (2010) says:

Blogs, wikis, automated essay scoring, and open source netbooks are four important tools that can assist writing instruction. …thoughtful use of these tools can enhance effective instructional approaches that emphasize writing for meaningful social purpose, mastery of relevant genres, and development of students’ academic language proficiency.

The students got improvement in their vocabulary mastery and the

language used. Through the commenting session they shared opinions, while in

the other task they re-read their own writing. They implicitly learn from mistakes

which were mostly related to the vocabulary and grammar. It gives them chance

to reflect their learning. This finding is supported by Mynard (2007; 2008) who

claims that blog is a medium to reflect on specific aspects of the students’

learning. However, the findings does not show significant difference in students’



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control of grammar used as Bloch (2007) notes in his article that blogging does

not really take effect in grammatical control.

The students had become careful in writing, especially related to

punctuation and the spelling of word. Hedge (1998: 8) says that writers need to

punctuate meaningfully, so that the readers get the intended messages. In addition,

Warschauer (2010) states that blog is one of important tools which can assist

writing instruction and lead to meaningful writing, mastery of relevant genres, and

development of students’ academic language proficiency.

2. Student blog is able to improve situation in the writing class

Blog features allow students to post and read the entries easily after

working under instruction. They had discussion in drafting stage; meanwhile

publishing work online enables students to make contributions to the class,

promotes peer learning, and encourages quality in work (Johnston, 2002).

Besides, the students accessed the blogs not only in but also outside the class. It

shows that they had a greater interest on blog they wrote. Supporting to this,

Barriors (2003) claims in his article that blogs are able to habituate writing.

The students were also engaged to write on blog whether in group or

individually. Supporting to this, Bloch (2007) states, “Having students blog in

class is a pedagogy that can be useful in the development of their writing ability

while making them contributors and not just consumers of information on the

World Wide Web”. In addition, the case of “not allowing others to read” had

already moved and the students could share their comments frankly. It is

supported by Godwin-Jones (2010) that personal blogs are common among

students and the process writing seems to be a feasible solution to heightening the

writing abilities and confidence of students (Ho, 2006).



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CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION, IMPLICATION, AND SUGGESTIONS

The implementation of blogs as teaching-learning media brings some

effects as mentioned in the previous chapter, especially in relation with writing

skill. The last chapter presents about the conclusion, implementation, and the

suggestions of the action research conducted in the eighth grade students of SMP

Negeri 1 Wonogiri in the academic year of 2010/2011.

A. CONCLUSION

The final discussion in the previous chapter can be drawn into two

conclusions. Firstly, the use of student blog to teach writing can improve students’

writing skill. It is taken into account that the students had positive progress in

writing sub skills as mentioned in the research findings. The improvements on

developing, arranging, and connecting of ideas of text had allowed the students to

write interesting stories and it was easy to follow. The better word choice and

correct grammar were also performed in their writing although some students still

made a few mistake in spelling and punctuation.

Supporting to the statement, the students had higher mean score in the

final post-test (post-test 2), which was 84.50. This score was above the school

passing grade which was settled at 78.00. The mean score had gradually improved

since the first post-test. The students got 82.18 in post-test 1 and 74.45 in the pre-

test.

The second conclusion is that the implementation of blog in writing class

improves the situation during the teaching-learning process. Referring to the

research findings, the class was conducted in friendly situation and the students

were allowed to set their selves in a comfortable condition while finishing the

task. They also had a great enthusiasm toward the lesson, paid full attention to the

materials, and got more confidence to show their writings. In general, the use of

blog allow the owner to share his/her thoughts in written journal. Through student



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blog, the students had an access to publish their works and to share comments

among them. This activity had encouraged them to write better.

Finally, student blog can effectively be used as the main media in

writing. Having a range of advantages that allows blog facilitates the learning

process, the student blog has improved the students’ writing skill and the

classroom situation in the the eighth grade students of SMP Negeri 1 Wonogiri.

B. IMPLICATION

The implementation of certain media effects the teaching-learning

process. Through the use of media, the materials will be more interesting or even

boring depends on its appropriateness to the skill being taught. In addition, the

application of certain media should be completed with the appropriate teaching

methods to achieve the goal. In this research, the implementation of student blog

as the main media was combined with discussion and PPP (Presentation, Practice

and Production) method.

The appropriate media could encourage and motivate the students to be

actively involved in the lesson. When the students use the media individually,

they will enjoy it and actively learn. Moreover, the positive effects of it can

motivate the students to use the media the class. In implementing student blog, the

students could access student blog and teacher blog anytime they wanted and

write or read anything on it. This will allow them to learn unconsciously by

putting the materials on the blog page.

The use of blog was not only restricted to write recount text, but also can

be utilized to write other text types and held discussion forums. The highly varied

material would engage the students to be more active. Besides, blogs can be used

in many ways as a communication tool. In conclusion, it can be implied that

student blog can be used as an alternative media in language-teaching process

especially for teaching writing.



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C. SUGGESTIONS

Based on the conclusion and implication above, there would be some suggestions

dealing with the teaching of writing.

1. For teachers

The writing class commonly seems not so interesting for the students.

Therefore, the teachers should provide attractive media and appropriate

teaching method. The teacher could use student blog in collaborative learning

other than the previous method mentioned, so that they could also develop

various material of teaching writing.

2. For students

The students should be accustomed to the writing habit themselves. It is

not necessary to write a long story to practice, but writing sentences in routine.

They can use blog practice the writing outside the class and find wider

environment to share opinions and thoughts.

3. For institutions

The institution should encourage and support the English teacher to

improve the quality of their teaching. It can be done through providing

facilities that enables access to new materials and media of teaching and

learning.


utilizing student blogs to improve writing skill (an

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